Holiday patterned paper makes it easy to create attractive pages commemorating your family's special celebrations.
The Importance of Patterned Paper
For scrapbookers, patterned paper is one of the most basic supplies for creating a layout. You can find paper with designs ranging from subtle watercolor patterns or geometric stripes to bold flowers and funky swirls. There are also a number of papers with seasonal patterns that can be used for scrapbooking Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine's Day, or Easter photos.
Holiday patterned paper can be purchased in several different ways:
- By the sheet
- As part of a holiday page kit
- As part of a large stack of paper
If you don't enjoy making handmade cards or holiday decorations, buying paper by the sheet or as part of a small page kit is probably the best option. Paper stacks often have 50-100 sheets of paper, so you'll be scrapbooking Christmas pictures of your grandchildren with the paper you purchased when your daughter was in kindergarten!
In addition to standard patterned paper, you can also find holiday designs on a variety of specialty scrapbooking papers:
- Double-sided patterned paper
- Glittered paper
- Paper with flocking
- Paper with metallic accents
- Printed vellum
- Paper with die cut designs
These specialty papers can be a great way to add a dramatic touch to your holiday scrapbooking projects. However, they are usually quite a bit more expensive than standard patterned papers. Look for sales and coupons from your favorite scrapbook supply stores to get the best deals.
Using Holiday Patterned Paper
Using patterned paper with a holiday theme doesn't have to be difficult. Here are a few tricks to help you make the most of your favorite paper designs:
- If you're working with a scrapbook sketch and you don't have enough photos to duplicate the layout exactly, replace photos with blocks of patterned paper cut to fit.
- If the patterned paper has large images, such as a Santa or a snowman, cut out these pictures and adhere them to your page with foam adhesive for instant dimensional scrapbook embellishments.
- Use holiday patterned paper to mat the dominant photo on your layout.
- Use a strip of torn paper as a simple page border.
- Cut letters for your title from your patterned paper.
- Cut a tag from patterned paper to use for your layout journaling.
- Piece together several different scraps of coordinating patterned paper to make your own custom holiday background.
Thinking Outside the Box
If you're the type of scrapbooker who enjoys shopping for supplies as much as she likes creating pages, you may discover you've purchased more paper than you need for scrapbooking a particular holiday. However, holiday patterned paper is more versatile than you might expect. Here are some ideas for creative paper swaps you can try:
- A sheet of vibrant red Christmas paper could work well on a Valentine's Day layout.
- If you have leftover Valentine's Day paper, use the heart designs to make pages about love, romance, or weddings.
- Use richly colored Thanksgiving papers for scrapbooking your heritage family photos.
- Use leftover black and white New Year's paper to make a sophisticated wedding scrapbook layout.
- Many Halloween designs are well suited for Mardi Gras pages.
- Blue and silver winter themed papers can be combined with other pastels to make a fun Easter scrapbook layout.
- Leftover pastel print Easter scrapbook papers can easily be used for scrapbooking baby shower photos.
Another good way to make the most of your patterned paper is to change the color by applying a thin wash of walnut ink or watercolor paint. If you wish, you can add extra texture by sanding the paper lightly. This will often help obscure the original design enough to make the paper suitable for a non-holiday layout.
