Making your own scrapbooking backgrounds

Scrapbooking is a fantastic way of getting those photos out of albums and off computers. Using store bought items is a good way to get started but the expenses start adding up, especially when each range or brand has their own unique range of colours and embellishments. It makes it so hard to mix and match elements between ranges. One way to over come being trapped by the scrapbooking companies is to borrow a few tips from the card makers and mixed media artists and make your own scrapbooking backgrounds and matching embellishments.

Lovely and colourful background are easy and fun to throw together once you have mastered a few basic techniques. Using cheap paints on white or cream cardboard will give you a renege of different backgrounds for you to mix and match.

Start with two or three colours of cheap acrylic paint, the student type is fine for this application. These two colours can be ones that go together; pink and purple or dark and light blue. We don't need to be colour mixing whizzes to get going. Also having a white paint will increase the shades you have, giving us a good array of colours to create out backgrounds. You will also need two or three paint brushes, an old credit card or store card, a jar of water, a plastic plate for a pallet and a cloth to wipe the brushes on.

Cover your working surface with a protective layer so we don't need to worry about getting paint everywhere. Layout your first piece of card. Squeeze a pea size of each paint onto your pallet. Out a little of the first colour onto your credit card and use the card to scrap the paint down the page. Continue until the paint has run out on the card. Load up the next colour and scrap this paint around too. We don't need to fully cover the page with each colour; just do what looks okay. As each layer of paint is very thin, it dries quickly so the colour don't get muddy.

Now mix a little of the colours together with some white to create a third colour. Scrape that around too. Continue until the entire page is full of colour. Leave to dry.

There are many ways to use items you already own or can easily make. Found objects like buttons or beads make lovely embellishments. To have embellishments that match your painted background, use chipboard cut outs, punched shapes or jigsaw puzzle pieces and paint them with the paints you used for your background.

Now you are ready to assembly your scrapbook page with unique background and embellishments.

Happy scrapping!