Create Your Own Scrapbooking Patterns
One of the most exciting aspects of scrapbooking is the opportunity to exercise your own creativity. Nowhere is that greater than in the process of making your own patterns. Patterns can be created in and on paper, plastic, die-cuts, metal, ribbon and cloth…. In short, just about anything!
You might want a great border to dress up a page of your scrapbook. You can use crayons, pens, colored pencils or chalk to draw exactly what you want. You don’t even have to be an artist who can ‘draw straight lines’. Straight lines are easy, just use a ruler. But patterns are easy, too. If you can’t draw well freehand there are dozens of pre-made shapes to help you.
Suppose the photos on your scrapbook page are of a great vacation to the Bahamas. You can extend the theme and give your photos a great setting by creating a sky-and-sea pattern. A chalk swath across the top of light blue, a few white swirls, and voila! Or, you may have a heritage album with terrific photos of your grandfather from the 1940s. A cut-out pattern in subtle browns to offset the shades of gray in a black and white photograph works well.
But making patterns isn’t limited to drawing. You can pierce the paper, add ribbons and more.
You can make individual piercings in paper or fold it to create a repeating pattern. The holes can be purely decorative, say a pattern of hearts and diamonds to dress up your Las Vegas vacation. Or, they can provide a space to allow photos, text and illustrations to show through. You can even jazz up the border around the holes with colored ink and combine patterns of different types.
Baby-themed scrapbooks are a popular choice for exercising creativity making patterns with ribbons and cloth. You can make miniature ‘curtains’ that cover a delicate baby photo. Just use flexible cloth, thread sewing thread through a loop at the top and glue the string at both ends to the page. Repeat the ‘curtains’ across the page and you’ve got a whole gallery.
Or just dress up the page by finding a colored or patterned ribbon you like and frame a border around the entire page, separate it into four quarters, or underline some text. You can make a thousand and one patterns just using simple, decorative strips of cloth.
You can even use your computer to make patterns that would be hard to draw. Many graphics software packages allow you to easily create patterns unlike any you’ve ever seen. Or copy an image from the Internet that strikes your fancy. It’s easy to paste that image into a document and manipulate it. Then print it out with your color inkjet printer. You can crop it, cut it into an interesting shape to surround photos or text, or use it for a great looking border on a scrapbook page.
There’s no limit to the patterns you can find. And if you don’t find what you want, make your own!
