make your own paper...

Okay so I've been busy the last couple of weeks on crunch time as my mom is having her grand opening for her store's new location and I was nominated to create her a "Before and After" album of her shop. Of course the color scheme she chose made it difficult to find papers so instead of searching for colored papers I have created my own "patterned paper".


And since I haven't posted lately I thought it would be nice to share a technique with all you wonderful people who still come by and check out my blog. Here we go....

Now to make this paper I chose to stamp two different colors to add a little more, but you can always change that up. You can stamp with one color, but 2 or more stamps or you can stamp with more colors it's all up to you and how you want it to look. It's definitely fun to play around and explore to see what you can come up with. It's one of my favorite thing techniques. I used a background stamp and stamped the whole paper with the lighter color and then I chose a darker ink and stamped the butterfly randomly around my paper.

To make it really look like patterned paper this is my favorite trick...you have to stamp off the paper. To do this I use a cellophane plastic baggie (that way you protect your work surface) that I got from a paper pack or if you're like me and shop online some people ship paper in them as well. I let it show from behind my paper and then I stamped my image partially on the cardstock and part on the plastic. That way it gives a continuous look and that you didn't stop before the edge of you paper.


You can see here my plastic piece with stamped images on it. When you're done you can either throw it away or you can even re-use it by wiping it off with a baby wipe.

Have fun playing : )