Three ways to make unique scrapbooking cards

Hi everyone, it’s Leontien and I’m so excited to bring you my first blog post for Sahin Designs, let’s dive right in!

You can never have enough journaling cards right? In this post I’ll show you three ways to create new and unique journaling- and filler cards with the supplies that you already have in your digital collections.

1. Combining patterns & colors

One of the most easy ways to create unique looking cards is to look for papers in your digital collections that compliment each other, be it through color or pattern. You can combine them in lots of different ways. Think: diagonals, horizontal & verticals or using simple shapes.

A few tips:

• Look for complimenting color combinations
• Look for complimenting patterns
• Look for angles and white space

For the cards below I opted for some pretty bold combinations. I created some cards with diagonals, horizontals and some cards with ‘cutout’ circles which are great to bring more focus to any embellishment you may use. Try to think ahead: do you have enough space for any text or embellishments? Do your choices compliment the photos you are going to be using?

Used: Frolic, Travelogue, Portraits & Woodnote.

2. Create depth

One of the ways to create more interest in your spreads is by creating more depth with your cards. I like to stack multiple cutouts and glue them together to create nice, thick elements. I do this for my hybrid elements but you can also incorporate depth within the card itself.

For the card above I printed out a card using the red houndstooth paper from the ‘Equinox’ kit. I then ran the card through my die-cut machine to cut out the speech bubble. I  kept both the negative and positive piece. Then I ran the same speech bubble die a few times through my machine, cutting the number out of plain cardstock.  I glued all the cut pieces together to give them a nice thickness. Last step was to glue a piece of cardstock behind the card with the cutout speech bubble.  This way you can use the negative space as a placeholder for your stacked piece and the pattern of the cutout piece will match seamlessly with your pattern!

You can use this technique for all kinds of shapes. Personally I’m loving the more intricate shapes like numbers or letters.

Used: Joy, Equinox & Portraits.

3. Make it transparent

I really like to incorporate transparent elements into my spreads and it’s super easy! All you need is some printable transparent ‘paper’ (I prefer inkjet but just make sure your transparencies are compatible with whatever printer you will be using), a printer and you’re good to go!

A few tips:

• Keep in mind the effect your  transparent card has on the next spread: you may want to avoid text (which will be unreadable from the other side) or colors that might clash with next week’s photos or cards.
• Sequins or small wood veneer elements combine very nicely with transparent cards!
• Think about using transparencies as dividers to get a more layered look to your album.
• If you want to embellish the transparent card, make sure you have the same size and shape embellishment on the other side so both sides look nice.

Used: Frolic, Travelogue & Equinox.

I hope I’ve given you some ideas to use your digital collections in a few more creative ways. If you have any questions let me know in the comments below.

Happy scrapping!