Homemade Backing Paper

Two quick and easy ways to make your own fabulous backing papers. Great to try if you don’t have the colour backing paper to match in with a card idea you want to make.

We’ve shown an image of each finished A4 sheet with a zoomed in image of a section of the finished sheet.

Items you will need to make these backing papers:

  1. Sheets of A4 plain white paper
  2. Stampendous Stamp – Mod Blossom Medium
  3. Twinkling H20s in various shades
  4. Aqua-Flo Brush OR Spray Splatter Bottle & Paintbrush
  5. Rubber Stamp Cleaner
  6. A sponge or cotton wool

Stamped Flower Paper – Blues

How to make the blue stamped flower paper:

Use an aqua-flo brush to apply Twinkling H20 blue paint to the rubber stamp and stamp the image randomly over the paper. If you don’t have an aqua-flo brush you can wet the Twinkling H20 paint cake by spraying it with water using a spray splatter bottle, wait 10 minutes for the paint to soften and then use a normal paint brush.

Clean the stamp with the stamp cleaner and repeat, applying a different colour blue to the rubber stamp and stamp again randomly over the paper. Repeat with various shades of light blue, dark blue, aqua & turquoise until you have covered the paper completely. Put paper to one side to dry before use.

Stamped Flower Paper – Red/Orange/Yellow

Make the red/orange/yellow stamped flower paper in exactly the same way as the blue paper except use paint colours of red, orange and yellow.

Sponged Paper – Blues

How to make the blue sponged paper:

Wet various shades of blue Twinkling H20 paint cakes by spraying them with water using a spray splatter bottle, wait 10 minutes for the paints to soften.

Using a damp sponge or damp piece of cotton wool wipe the paint randomly down the paper. Wash the sponge or use a new piece of cotton wool and repeat for a second shade of blue. Repeat again with as many different shades as you would like to use.

Use a clean damp sponge or clean damp piece of cotton wool to blend the paint until you have covered the paper completely. Be careful to not to press to hard or apply too much water or the paper surface may get damaged or it may tear. Put paper to one side to dry before use.

Tips & Suggestions:

Both the stamped flower paper and the sponged paper can be done in any colour scheme that you want to fit in with your project or your favourite colours.

For the stamped flower paper, rather than sticking with shades of one colour you could try primary colours using a mixture of bright coloured flowers or pastel colours using a mixture of soft pastel colours.

We’ve used twinkling H20s shimmering water colour paints for all three of the papers as the dried colour has a really lovely pearlised sheen but you can use other colouring methods too. For both the blue and red stamped flower paper you can use any kinds of rubber stamping inks instead. For the sponged paper you can use chalks with a sponge dauber applicator or cotton wool. Why not experiment with different methods and colours until you get a finish you are happy with.

As well as changing the ink/paint colours you don’t have to stick with white paper, you can of course try various different coloured sheets of paper to apply your colouring / stamped images to.

You can also try using different rubber stamp designs as well, a snowflake, Christmas tree, holly leaf, Christmas pudding etc. are examples that would work really well for Christmas papers. A bell, dove or wedding cake would be great for wedding designs, the possibilities are endless!

Papers Created By Jill.

Lilac Get Well Soon Card

The soothing lilac tones on this card are perfect for a special get well message.

This card design would also be perfect to use for other occasions by simply changing the peel off sticker sentiment to suit the occasion.

What you will need to make this card:

  1. 1 sheet of A4 225gsm Plain Card Skylark Violet
  2. 1 x C5 envelope
  3. GROOVY Box & Card Maker
  4. Pearlised or plain lilac or purple card
  5. Petals tissue paper from A5 Paper Pack (15) – Hearts & Petals Tissue Paper
  6. Large Lever Craft Punch – Kikyou Flower
  7. Get Well Soon Peel Off Sheet -Silver
  8. Organza Ribbon – Lilac
  9. Pastel mini round brads
  10. Miracle Adhesive Film for Vellum or Glue Dots – Invisi Dots for Vellum
  11. 6mm double sided sticky tape
  12. Hi-Tack Original All Purpose Very Sticky Glue
  13. 5mm Sticky Foam Pads
  14. Craft knife, pencil, ruler, cutting mat & sellotape

How to make this card:

Turn the A4 sheet of skylark violet card into an A5 card blank, using the GROOVY box & card maker to make a groove half way across the card to make a neat crease line and then fold over. Alternatively make a very light score mark with your ruler and craft knife before folding over.

Turn the card blank you have just made round so it is landscape/tentfold style.

Take a sheet of the petals tissue paper, measure and cut out a rectangle that is the same width as the card blank but a bit shorter than the top half of the card blank. Use the Miracle adhesive film or Invisi dots for vellum to stick it to the top half of the card blank.

Cut a length of the lilac organza ribbon slightly longer than the width of the card blank and use double sided sticky tape along the whole length of the ribbon to stick it along the bottom edge of the petals tissue paper, keeping the ribbon as straight as possible. Trim off the excess ribbon on both sides.

Use some more of the same ribbon and make a bow. Use craft glue to stick the bow to the ribbon strip over to the right hand side as shown in the picture. Trim the ends of the bow, if necessary, to make neat even length ends.

Apply a Get Well Soon wording set from the silver peel off sticker sheet to the left hand side of the card just below the ribbon strip.

Use the large craft punch to punch out 6 kikyou flower shapes out of the pearlised lilac / plain lilac card.

Use your craft knife to pierce a small hole in the centre of each flower and push a pink pastel round brad through each hole. Bend the prongs of each brad back behind the flower petals.

Finally use sticky foam pads to attach the 6 kikyou flowers randomly over the bottom half of the card blank.

Card Idea by Janine