How To: Create Patterned Paper

Despite a fairly large paper stash, I wasn't able to excavate a single piece of patterned paper that coordinated with this week's Spring Color Challenge at Heart 2 Heart.

I don't usually work in the Spring color group and the H2H challenge is a good opportunity for me to give it a whirl. In fact, not only is Easter just around the corner, I also have a new grandson due to arrive in early April .... I better keep anything pastel at the top of my supply list!

Okay. Back to the matter at hand .... no patterned paper with the colors I need. The best solution? Dig out a sheet of cardstock, some ink, an assortment of stamps, and make my own!

Creating a random patterned paper is easy and fun. In this case, I've decided to make a polka dot paper using all three colors in the challenge.

Daisy White Card Stock
Sponge Daubers
Sweet Leaf, Sunkiss Yellow, and Sky Ink Pads

One dauber per ink pad.
Make sure you set yourself up in a way that will prevent you from mixing up the daubers and inks.
Just say NO to cross-daubing! It can mess up your project in a quick hurry! (I know from experience!)

I ink my daubers and use them as a stamp to create dots.
One tried and true tip on stamping out your own patterns:
Think in 3's and stamp in a triangular pattern.
I stamped out my largest dots first.
You'll notice that the dauber leaves a soft, textured dot.
If you want a solid dot, use the backside of a circular acrylic stamp.

 Make sure to stamp off the edge of the paper to create a realistic "cut sheet" look.
Doing so gives you a better perspective on the "flow" of the pattern as you are stamping.
Even though this is random stamping, there is still a "pattern" ...
or as I prefer to call it .... a method to the madness!
I recommend doing this even if you know you'll be trimming your sheet down.

Next,  I pulled circles and dots from assorted stamp sets to add different sizes, texture, and variety.

The end result is this perfectly coordinated patterned paper that I'll be using for
 my new grandson's first baby book page! 

Here's a patterned paper I created using the Hooray Bouquet stamp set #D1491:

Go to THIS post for all the details!

 See? You don't have to be bummed out when your paper stash doesn't have what you're looking for. And, you don't have to put a project on hold until you run to the store in search of paper that may not even exist! Roll up those sleeves, pull out those ink pads, stamps, daubers and go for it! Get all creative and customize like crazy!!!

I hope you've found this little tidbit helpful.

Just a quick side note: I didn't come up with this on my own. I learned this technique at Ella Publishing and Cleary I Stamp.

Thanks for stopping by.
Your comments are always welcome and appreciated!