Hello! Welcome back! This is Amy Sorensen. Yesterday I challenged you to do some patterned paper, and today I’m sharing a different technique for using your papers.
I’ve been scrapbooking long enough that I remember when double-sided patterned paper was an innovative product. So, I confess: it still makes me just a little bit happy to have a paper with two awesome patterns. It doubles the possibilities!
But what happens when you want to use both sides of a patterned paper—and you only have one sheet?
(Ahhh, the conundrums of scrapbookers!)
I use a technique I think of as gutting, which is simply cutting some scraps from a spot that will eventually be behind something else.
Let’s start with this patterned paper:
(Again, I nabbed the image from scrapbook.com. This time not because I forgot to take a picture before I started scrapping, but because I wanted you to see both sides.)
I am consistently drawn to papers that have a print on one side and a solid on the other. They are useful in so many ways! Especially since they’re already perfectly matched, it saves me the time of digging through a cardstock pile looking for exactly the right shade.
I found this piece in my “boyish” drawer, and I thought it would work perfectly for a back-to-school layout. I wanted to use the striped side as the layout’s background, but I also wanted to use some of the solid red from the back. Here are the cuts I made:
First, I decided about where I wanted to put the picture, and then I cut a 5.5” x 7.5” piece to mat my photo with.
You can see in the photo, but before adhering my photo, I cut another chunk out of the middle of the photo mat. That way I’d also have some of the red for the title.
Even though the chunk I cut was only about 3" x 5", it was exactly enough to cut what I needed for the title and embellishments. My cutting mat looked like this before I sent it through the Silhouette:
(I use washi tape all the time to stick smaller pieces to the cutting mat. It adds just enough stability if your mat is starting to lose its stickiness.)
And, here is the layout I made with these supplies:
(The algebra formulas are from an old Basic Grey rub-on olio. I used up almost all of the bits I had left on this layout—isn't it satisfying to finish off all of something?)
I use this gutting technique quite often to stretch the usefulness of my patterned papers. It makes the backs of layouts interesting, but it all stays together just fine.
Do you ever gut your papers?
