Have you ever had a piece of patterned paper that you absolutely love, but when you try to use it on a card, it suddenly feels like too much?
That was the question I was playing with when I made these Christmas cards.
I was working with scraps of a retired Stampin' Up! paper called All Is Bright, which features gorgeous photographic close-ups of Christmas decorations. The paper is beautiful, but it's also quite bold, so I wanted to see if I could use it on a card without letting the pattern completely take over.
And while these particular scraps happened to be Christmas paper, the ideas I'm sharing here can be used with any bold patterned paper, whether you're working with scraps or a full sheet.
Starting with scraps
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| The original project the scraps came from |
When I saw the Global Design Project sketch #GDP562, I thought those leftover strips might be a really good fit.
I started by laying the Christmas strips horizontally across a piece of cardstock, but there wasn't quite enough of the Christmas paper to fill the space.
Rather than trying to find more of the same paper, I looked through my scraps and found a red tone-on-tone paisley pattern that was a similar colour.
It worked surprisingly well.
When I tried placing the patterned sections directly against each other, I felt like there was just too much pattern happening. So instead of completely blocking the sections together, I left little strips of white cardstock between them.
Let the patterned paper be the star
Once I'd created the background, I knew I didn't want to add lots of stamped images and embellishments. The patterned paper was already doing a lot of the visual work.
Instead, I wanted the rest of the card to support the paper rather than compete with it. This is where I think your sentiment can do a lot of the work.
Rather than choosing a small sentiment and then adding more decorative elements around it, I chose a larger Christmas sentiment from the Holly Jolly Christmas stamp set.
The combination of the different fonts gives the sentiment some visual interest of its own, which means it can act almost like another design element on the card.
Adding a little gold
I also wanted to bring in some gold, but I didn't want to add another large element to an already-busy card. So I used an old technique to selectively add gold embossing to parts of the stamped sentiment.
If you'd like to see exactly how I created the two-toned black and gold sentiment, I've shown the whole process in the video above.
Love creating with scraps?
I've collected eight of my favourite scrap-friendly projects into Cardmaking with Scraps – Issue 1, designed to help you make the most of those little pieces already sitting in your stash.
Discover Cardmaking with Scraps – Issue 1
