A fun way to work with digital paper is to use it to create a page border. You can use solid or patterned paper. One or more papers can be layered together to create an interesting page border.
Determine which paper you would like to use. Do you want a tone on tone look (same color) or do you want a contrasting border? Do you want it to be subdued colors/patterns or would you like something solid or maybe bold? There are so many ways to go with this.
For my sample page, I chose a paper I loved as soon as I saw it. This paper with the scallop doodle on it by Little Butterfly Wings (SummerScape kit) caught my eye and fit in with the neutral page border I wanted to create. I knew the main portion of my page was going to be colorful so I wanted to keep the border low key, not distracting from the main focus but enhancing it. I dragged the paper onto my page and selected a wide strip that covered the width of the page. I cut it out by using the marquee tool, then inverting the selection and deleting the part of the paper I didn’t want to use. I then duplicated the strip 3 times so I could place it along all four edges. I then selected all four layers and merged them together. So that it looked like one large frame around my page with no paper edge seams showing, I used the lasso tool and selected the overlay edges of each corner where the paper overlapped and clicked on fill>content aware and it blended the overlapped areas together so it looked seamless.
The border is wide enough to write on, so I placed text along the bottom portion.
Once you have created your border, you can edit it as you please. You might want to recolor or stamp onto it. You might create a cluster to place on it. Try combining papers, building up depth.
You can add a drop shadow to your page border. Try different shadow styles, for different effects. An embossed style will make the main page seem lifted, rather than the frame.
There are so many options for your page border. Give it a try and experiment with it. I hope I’ve inspired you to create a page border!
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