Tutorial: Creating Your Own Patterned Paper

Hi there!!  Today, I thought I would share a fun little tutorial for creating your own patterned paper.  I made this layout for Issue 6 of Jot Magazine using some awesome products from Heidi Swapp and Becky Higgins' Craft Spotlight 2014 Australian tour.  

Here is a look at the layout I'll be sharing.  It's a simple layout, but it was so fun to put together!

Let's get started!

Start by gathering your supplies.  You will need a piece of white card stock (or color of choice), a blank piece of paper and some of your favorite stamps.  Here, I have a Heidi Swapp script stamp set.

Using your stamp block, add on a few different stamps.  I placed mine randomly around my block, trying to make sure the stamps were not uniform or perfectly placed.

Pick your favorite color of ink and wet your stamps.

Begin stamping all over your piece of white card stock.  To give that look of patterned paper, I like to layer a piece of scrap paper under my base page and stamp my images with part of the stamp on the card stock and part of the image on the scrap paper.  The partially completed words keep the continuity of the "patterned paper" without it being too perfect.  I continued randomly stamping all over my card stock until my page was completely covered.

You can definitely see a repetition of the stamps on my page, but I love that it's still kind of random and scattered.  This technique can easily be applied to just about any stamp or stamp set, large or small!  The possibilities are just endless!

I played around with my background page for quite a while trying to figure out exactly which I like it best.  In the end, I decided to trim my paper down to 8.5x11 inches and layer a piece of vellum over the stamps to soften and mute the color.  I then adhered that page to a piece of 12x12 card stock and added my journal in a vertical strip on the left side of my page.

A doily and simple embellishments adorn the bottom edge of my photo adding a little pop of color and texture.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you enjoyed this simple and easy tutorial for creating patterned paper!!  Let me know if you give it a try! I'd love to see your work!