Seven Tips to Spark Up Your Next Paper Craft Project

Seven Tips to Spark Up Your Next Paper Craft Project by Dr. Paper


Are you planning to make custom note cards, a photo scrapbook, personalized stationary, gift tags, wrapping paper and other paper projects? Are you are looking for an inspiration for a new project? Or maybe you have one that's just not quite finished and needs just the right touch? Well, here are seven ideas to make an ordinary project an extraordinary one. For more papery inspirations check out Stationary Nation.
Stamps. Who doesn't like postage stamps? Since real stamps depict famous people, you can compliment someone by putting their face on a stamp. Start with say a photo and put it inside a perforated border. Then add a number and a symbol for cents, pounds, yen to your graphic or make up a fictitious country with a curious symbol for their monitary unit. Finish it off with a drop shadow that shows off the perforation. Search google images for stamps to print out as a starting point.
Posterize it. This is a great technique that often gives very dramatic results. To posterize something means to reduce the color palette. So instead of a photo that might have hundreds of colors in suble gradients, a posterized image only has a few colors. Digital software often has a posterize option, where you can reduce an image down to 2, 3, 4 or more colors. This is a great effect for faces, like the iconic Che Guevara picture, or Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe art. If you don't have software for posterizing, you can do it by hand easily enough. Just start out with a photo that has a lot of contrast, that is clear highlights and shadows. Cover the highlights completely in white paint and the shadows completely in black paint; that's what it means to take a photo and posterize it.
Droplets are a nice effect. They can give a nice organic shape to frame a piece as an alternative to a rectangular matte. Or merging droplets can represent unity, rapprochement, or the meeting of two minds. You can use photo manipulation software to get these effects, or just use a straw filled with food coloring to make the droplets.
Bubbles, bubble, bubbles. It's fun to say and they are fun to use. They can drift off from the main design in a fizzy fun way. Or consider using dialogue bubbles, you know the kinds you see in cartoons, instead of boring old regular below-the-picture captions.
Organic spirals add a nice touch. They are easy to make in photoshop, corel photopaint or your favorite digital paintbrush program. Just start out with a random picture from the internet. Cut it into a narrow strip, then use the swirl, twirl, ripple, wave, punch, pinch, bug eye options in your software program. There are great examples of swirls done with computer software at new skool and radial tattoos. A nice effect is to duplicate the resulting image, and then paste it as a mirror image, perhaps with a gradient fade. Don't have a computer program? Then use a sumi-e brush to swirl around ink.
Symbol substitution for a letter in words. You've seen these, such as 7even for seven, number3 for numbers, or Do !t for Do It. Or instead of an alphanumeric symbol, a graphic symbol can make a creative statement. A lightening bolt in the shape of a z for Zap.
Shadows. A drop-shadow can make a graphic stand out. If your graphics software doesn't have the option, it's simple enough to simulate one. Just copy the object, convert it to grayscale, blur it and lighten it. Then place your original object on top of the copy, offset by several pixels. Viola a dropped shadow. Or you can hand make a drop shadow with construction paper. Start with the object you want to give a shadow to, let's say an award ribbon. Trace the shape of the ribbon on gray construction paper, then rough up the edges to simulate a shadows edges. Now place the ribbon on top of the construction paper offsetting it a bit to give the shadow effect.
About the Author
Dr. Paper adores the fine tooth of hand pressed cotton paper.