Scrapbooking, Card Making, and Paper Crafting Ideas
- Fall Paper for Paper Craftingautumn leaf scrapbook image by robert mobley from Fotolia.com
If you are a crafter but have never tried paper crafts, you are in for an explosion of colors and patterns to work with. Choose to start with scrapbooking, card making or other paper crafting, as each is a little different. However, they use many of the same tools and materials, so it is easy to work on all three types of crafts, one after the other. - Start with a plan. So many scrapbookers just start gluing photos and embellishments without a well thought-out design. This doesn't mean that every page should have the same design, quite the contrary. However, the two open pages that are set across from each other should have a balanced layout, using the same theme and colors. Choose a focal point for each page. Most often, it will be a prized photo. Decide its location, preferably off centered. Choose supporting, smaller photos for each page, and place them in an attractive complementary manner. Decide on your journaling content and where it will be placed on the page. Glue it on if you are not writing it directly onto the background page. Embellishments come last. They should not overpower the page but merely enhance the photos and journaling. Make sure everything on the page relates, as if you are telling a story.
- A card layout is different than a scrapbooking layout, as you usually place the main picture or photo in the center. You have much less room to work with on the surface of a card. Even if you have little artistic talent, you can create a watercolor picture for your next greeting card. Start with a large rubber stamp that will fit the size you want for your picture. Press the stamp into the ink pad and then onto a scrap piece of paper, over and over, until it can barely be seen. Now press it onto your card paper. The lines should be a light grey color, dark enough for you to see to paint, but light enough to blend with the watercolors. Now paint the image with watercolors or watered-downed acrylic paints. Your picture will appear as though you simply painted freehand.
- Plain black-and-white composition books can easily be made into unique journals. You can find these books in the same area of the store as binder paper, notebooks and other school supplies. They have a bound binding, rather than a wire spiral binding. Start by cutting a ribbon long enough to go around the width of the book, plus enough to tie a bow. Glue this around the middle, outside of the book, over the top, back and binding. Most of this will be hidden by the cover paper, except for the bow that holds the pages shut. Then simply cut front and back paper pieces, slightly narrower than the book, so that the black binding still shows. Use a patterned or plain paper or card stock. Glue the paper on over the ribbon so the tails trail out the right side of the front and back of the book. Decorate the front of the journal as though it were a greeting card or scrapbooking page. Tie the ribbon into a bow to secure the journal pages closed.
