Paper Piecing – Patterning your Accents on the Page

Paper piecing is another technique for embellishments in your scrapbook layout. Make your own hand-made page accents. Paper piecing can involve different angles. If you can trace, cut and glue and enjoy putting together a puzzle, you should like utilizing the paper piecing technique. There is an English Paper Piecing project that is more about sewing or creating patterns for quilting. This particular term has a history. In another embellishment technique, we can delve into that aspect further later on.

Are you into patterns? Make your own paper piecing patterns, recreating motifs and elements in your photos, use tole-painting patterns, rubber stamps, clip art or coloring books for basic designs.

In the layout below, “Stuck in the Middle with You,” I created using some clown pictures of myself and added some clipart and chipboard elements which I colored with my gel pens. The title of a song or at least its main verse kept going around in my head, so I added it as journaling to my page. “Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.” At the bottom is a photo cutout of me and my husband. I placed a colorful striped vellum sheet over it, hole-punched and tied together with ribbons.

Step 1: Print or copy a pattern and reduce or enlarge to size. Better Homes and Gardens 1001 Full-Size Patterns, Projects & Ideas is a good place to find some really cool patterns.

Step 2: Trace each paper onto the desired shade of cardstock or patterned paper and trim. To keep your original pattern intact, try using vellum or tissue paper to trace each piece. Eliminate the need for a second tracing by placing the tissue over your cardstock and cutting both at the same time.

Step 3: Assemble your paper piecing design, attaching the pieces either to the background or to other pieces.

Variations include adding further definition by chalking, tracing edges with a pen, using textured paper or attaching some pieces with dimensional tape.

Years ago I created a layout with my then four-year old nephew Stephen in which he was napping on the rug, placing Dalmatians around his picture as if they were watching him sleep. I had cut these out from some paper used for birthday wrap. The type of album I was using was a Pioneer Magnetic Jumbo album and so had sticky pads to help adhere anything I put there. Following is the steps I used.

1. I cut out various Dalmatian dogs from some gift-wrap paper.

2. I worked them around the photo of my sleeping nephew.

3. I journaled the words “The Land of Nod” above the ensemble.

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