Hello everyone! Now that the December holiday season is sadly coming to a close, I wanted to share with you some ideas for incorporating gift wrap paper into your traditional art journals and digital designs. It could be paper that you have left over or, more meaningfully, paper from gifts that you received. I always feel bad about throwing away the beautiful paper covering gifts that I receive, but I also know that there is no reasonable way of keeping it all either. My happy medium is keeping a few scraps of the seasonal paper to include in a traditional art journal page, and also scanning it in to include on digital pages.
Digital Pages/Projects
It is super easy to include gift wrap on digital scrapbooking pages by scanning in the papers. There are several methods for including wrapping paper into your digital scrapbooking. Here are just a few of my favorites:
- Scan in a traditional decoupaged page (as described above) and use it as a digital background or a pocket card.
- Scan individual scraps of paper and use them as paper elements on a digital page. (NOTE: If you do not have a scanner, just take a photo of the paper scraps or the decoupaged page with your traditional camera or phone camera.)
- Use watercolor brushes to blend individual scraps or a decoupaged background (as described in #1 and #2) onto your digital page.
- Create your own digitally decoupaged background by layering different scanned scraps on top of each other. You can even add digital gesso and paint to help blend everything together.
Every scanner is a bit different but the basic instructions (which should be achievable in most scanners) are to scan as a photograph with a setting of at least 300 dpi. These settings should give you file that will integrate easily with your stash of digital scrapbooking kits. Once you get the file into your processing program, you might need to tweak the color and brightness settings. You can do this in a photo processing program such as Lightroom or through the levels/curves adjustments in Photoshop.
I scanned in this wrapping paper:
Here is a peek at the digital page I created this year. I blended the scanner paper into my background with watercolor brushes (I Mixed Up My Media 1 Splatter Brushes by Just Jaimee).
Traditional Art Journal Pages
I started a tradition several years ago of keeping some scraps of wrapping paper from Christmas Day and using them to create a decoupaged background for an art journal page. This look is easy to achieve by just taking the paper scraps and decoupaging them into a journal or onto a piece of cardstock to use as the background for a traditional scrapbook page.
I use Golden Matte Medium, but you can use any kind of decoupage glue (such as Mod Podge) for this project. The only tricky part is to make sure that the ink on the wrapping paper will not smear when you spread the glue over it. I test each piece of paper by brushing some decoupage medium over a small part to see how it reacts. If the ink does not smear, then I know it is safe to use.
Once all of the papers are tested and ready to go, all you need to do is adhere them to the page. I put a light coating of decoupage medium on the background page or the back of the wrapping paper and then place it on the cardstock or journaling page where I want it to go. Once I have all the pieces in place, I usually apply a layer of the decoupage medium over the top of everything to seal it in. This also provides a good surface if you plan to add paint or gesso as a finishing touch.
These pages make the perfect background for December Daily project pages, or a holiday scrapbooking page. They also make fabulous backdrops for art journal pages.
Of course, this technique is not limited to holiday wrapping paper – you can use it to create a memory keepsake of birthdays, anniversaries or “just because” gifts. I hope you have fun with it!
Until next time ~
Judie
Rae Clevett says
Great ideas. Love the idea of scanning the wrapping paper.
Teresa Carlucci says
What a great idea!