Elegant back gounds

One thing I try to do here in my blog is help you stretch your crafting dollars as I stretch mine, without sacrificing quality.  Today is another one of those posts.
Yesterday while my mum was shopping in Nordstrom's I  was trying to keep from going out of my mind from the music and price tags decide to take a quick look in the rest of the mall. Lo and behold there was a papyrus store there! Yay!  I love looking at their stuff, it gives me all kinds of Ideas!  Their selection of specialty paper was very small in this branch and really nothing floated my boat enough for to pay $5.00 a sheet (21x30 is size).  But I did find some really beautiful wrapping paper on sale!  I bought a few rolls, you can find some really beautiful papers this way. 
 
 I'm going to show you what I did with a roll:
 
One Caveat:  there is nothing scientific about my process and I am sure that anyone who can and have the patience to measure could find a better way!
 
One large roll of wrap on sale for $2.50

 First I take out the card board support paper.  This is easily done by jogging the paper, then you just pull it out.
 
 
Next I measure the roll and cut every 6 inches  (30 inch roll yield 5 segments)
I do this because I pretty much only make cards and nothing bigger than a 5x7 so this will yield an adequate backing size for any of my cards.
With the cardboard support insert gone, a good pair of scissors has no problem making this cut.
 
 
 
 Next I open the roll up a little bit and cut a straight line through the mini roll.  The smallest piece on the inside is still more than large enough for and A2 background size paper.  Each tube gave me 11 sheets. totaling 55 background papers.
 
 
 
Now these will need to be flattened, I just stick the whole pill under a ferw books and leave tehm there for a week, this presses them out beautifully.
 
 
And here is a card I made with the background paper I just cut!!
This beautiful design is from Nicecrane Designs.  I can't tell you how over the moon I am about the Nicecrane products, beauty, quality and value!   The focal image was printed out on 80# laid card stock.  Next time I will remember to edge the paper in black.
I hope this inspires you to look at your wrapping paper stash in a different light! 
Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!
Ginny M

Comments

Hi Ginny, what beautiful gift papers. I've been known to use some gift wrap myself for cards. I guess that would be considered my own "use it up" stash!! I also just re-read your post about your stack paper cutter. I'm still considering purchasing one, as my old guillotine hacker is only handling 3 max sheets of cardstock at a time. It's killing me!
Karen Murray said…
I love the wrapping paper card. Great idea! I love going into Papyrus for inspiration as well, so many beautiful things.
MamaZee said…
I am pretty new to card making, you have inspired me to look for wrapping paper. I never thought about using wrapping paper. Thank you very much

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