How To Make Photo Blocks

Melissa’s adorable cat layout has great texture on the background with white paste and a tiny floral stencil that she applies blue and tan paint overtop. This pattern works so well with all the flower embellishments and torn pattern papers she also used. I spotted her idea on the Shimmer Paints Instagram page.

Stenciling has gone from just being wall decor into paper crafting with smaller designs that work on projects like card making and scrapbooking. Stenciling is especially effective in creating amazing background patterns for your scrapbook layouts. You can stencil the entire background or just small sections, you can mix and layer stencils, you can even add more patterns to items like pattern papers and since you can chose the color of ink or paint you can customize the design to fit your style and theme. To get started simply tape the stencil to your paper with a low tack tape and apply stamping inks with blending brushes or sponges, spackle on pastes or lightly stipple on paints, remove tape and allow to dry. Let’s get inspired today by some fabulous scrapbook backgrounds using stencils.

Maryam used a grid stencil and green stamping ink to create patterns in the corners of her lovely layout, notice how she let the pattern fade out so their are no harsh edges. She added layering die cut flowers over her corners and stamped the sentiment in the same green ink to tie it together. Learn more at the Altenew blog.

Conny used a wonky circle stencil and colors of ink pads with blending brushes to ink a bold background on her Summer Traveler’s Notebook layout. Notice the colors matched the colors in her embellishments and photo. This is the perfect example of customizing your background with stenciling! She breaks it all down at The Cherry on Top blog.

Paige’s stunning layout uses four different stencils in four quadrants with stitching to separate them. She used white stencil paste and after they dried she applied colorful ink sprays and watercolors. She then added die cut with similar colors, photos and journal overtop for a bold and colorful design. Find more details at the Paige Taylor Evans blog.

Margarita’s beath taking Ocean layout has so many layers of mixed media with real seashells, die cut swirls and words, 3D flowers, cheese cloth, tags, twine and more. On her base pattern paper she added small circles with white paste in the corners, notice how some of the dots are not completely filled in, that gives added interest and reminds me of bubbles in the sea. Take a closer look at the 7 Dots Studio blog.

Heather used wooden hexagon shapes for her beautiful Sunflower layout so she mimicked that shape with a hexagon stencil and yellow ink on areas of the background. She also added some tiny dots and circles stamped with burgundy ink over the stenciling for a nice depth of pattern. The wooden and acrylic shapes and torn paper add nice texture too. Find more details at the Bramble Fox blog.

Brianna’s beautiful blue background was created with a large Mandala stencil, shades of blue ink blended on and some glitter paste added for color and sparkle. She also created that amazing yellow and gold title with stenciled and foiled letters! Around her photo she’s also added clusters of flowers, sticker letters and hand journaling. Learn more at the Shimelle blog.

Shenna’s pool layout has lots of sweet pastel accents like a sewn fabric patch, doilies, scalloped borders, charms, torn shell paper, chipboard words and Summer embellishments but the stand out is the pretty stenciled background. She used several colors of Distress Oxide Ink for the shells, mixing multiple colors for shading and dimension. Take a closer peek at the Hey Little Magpie blog.

Petra’s delicious Mojito layout has a wonderful ombre background created with a stencil and gradation of green ink colors down the background. She also heat embossed some splashes over top for some shine. She stamped and colored on the larger die cut title letters and created a fun hand drawn border around the edges. I spotted her idea in her PJD gallery at Scrapbook.com.

Don’t have the right stencil for a project, not to worry you can create and cut your own with thin plastic and an electronic die cutting machine. That’s exactly what Jayma did with her Cricut, creating a mosaic style stencil that she used paste with and then applied watered down ink from ink pads, also including some splatter and shimmer as well. Watch her process video at the Playing with Paper blog.

For Desiree’s darling cat layout she applied a dark grey Distress Grit paste over a honeycomb stencil directly on to pattern paper. This paste adds color and texture too for a rustic appeal that works perfectly with the faux woodgrain frame, metal accents, strips of rich pattern papers and dark texts. Find more info at the Creative Scrapbooker blog.

Stenciling is a great way to slightly tone down a stark white background like Nicole did, with subtle blue grey stenciling in two corners. There’s also a torn and stitched paper border, labels with typed sentiments, printed vellum tag, flowers and butterflies too. Learn more at the Scrapbook and Cards Today blog.

I hope today’s posts has inspired you to jump in to the trend of stenciling and take your scrapbook backgrounds to a whole new level!

-Heather

You can find Distress Oxide inks and pastes at Rangerink.com