13 Ways to Personalize your Page Kit. #13: Patterned Paper

We've come to the final installment of 13 Ways to Personalize your Page Kit! We've covered so much ground! We've looked at adding embellishments, inking die cuts, using pop up dots to add dimension, expanding the kit to add more pages, sewing, adding personal touches with journaling, adding additional photos with a pop out photo album, secret flip-up journaling or photo space, swapping out colors with our Color Bundles, adding photo or journaling space with a simple waterfall album, using washi tape, and creating a pocket behind photo mats to hold additional keepsakes. You can check those out by clicking on the one you want to learn more about! 

Our final personalization option is simple, but effective. With just a few inches of special paper, you can transform the simplicity of a kit to create something very special for yourself and your precious memories. I love our newest page kit - both its subject and its design, but I LOVE it even more with a few twists that I was able to make.

Personalization option #13: Patterned Paper

Using patterned paper is such a simple way to bring so much to your layouts. Don't get me wrong. Cardstock is awesome and we can do SO much with it but, sometimes, a punch of bright pattern paper, or the texture in the design, can highlight your design in the best ways. And this design is awesome. :) Let's take a look at Let's Bowl:

Original Let's Bowl Layout

Bowling has a special place in my heart. There are so many memories related to bowling - family fun, birthday parties, high school dances, awkward dates, late night disco bowling. It's so much fun! I love that this page kit has a retro vibe that brings back all of the nostalgia.

The hardest part for me is choosing a pattern. Which is pretty much most of it, right? Haha! But it's a little bit of an art and a little bit of just trusting your gut. I often like to think about a couple things when I'm looking for a pattern. 

1. What's the vibe I'm going for here? Is it subtle and gentle? Bright and cheerful? Antique? Modern? What do I want to feel when I look at it? For this layout, I wanted to feel fun, bright, and energetic.

2. What are the colors of the layout? Do I want them to match exactly? Do I want to find complementary colors? Are there any colors that are definitely off the table? This layout was especially tricky. The colors are fantastic - very bright and bold - but the greenish blue color mixed in with these bold reds, yellows, and oranges throws most color combinations off. I decided that I wanted to find colors that were bright and bold and could fit into that color wheel, but didn't necessarily have to match these. I also noted that the background was black - very stark - so I wanted the pattern paper to break up a little bit of the darkness.

3.What type of pattern am I going for? Do I want large prints or small features? Do I want randomness  or geometrical or symmetrical? How much blank space am I looking for? I wasn't totally sure what I wanted here, but I knew it needed to be small enough of a pattern to peek out between the larger features of the layout. I am also generally drawn to geometrical and symmetrical patterns, so it was likely that I'd go that direction.

With those things in mind, I started my hunt, quickly eliminating many options just based on these few answers to the questions. I ended up with what I think is the PERFECT patterned paper for what I was going for. Check it out.

Bright, Bold, Energetic, Fun, and right in the wheelhouse for color! 

Here's a little close-up of the paper.

I seriously love it so much. It's got a little bit of a retro feel and it has all of the characteristics I was looking for. The colors are really close, though not exact, and the bright white stands in stark contrast to the black. When tucked behind some of the larger pieces, it'll be a fantastic addition to the layout! 

The next decision is to decide where to put the patterned paper. I usually play around with it for a little while, but I have a few rules I generally go by. They're strictly personal preferences - there are no real rules - but I usually love the outcome when I follow these.

1. If I'm placing patterned paper on one page of the layout, I usually want to work it into the other page or pages as well. It balances it out and makes it look more cohesive.

2. If I'm going to be placing it behind something, it needs to breathe. By that, I mean that I want to be able to see the original paper enough that I get the pattern, the feel, the colors. Otherwise, what's the point? Sometimes that can be achieved with a small strip of paper. Sometimes it needs a larger chunk.

You can see how I achieved those goals in my placement in these photos.

The large strip at the top allowed me to break up some of the darkness of this page but not take it over. I made sure to place my photo mats in places where the bursts could be seen. Looking at this again, I may change the placement of the red star. I don't love how it's covering the patterned paper when there is plenty of blank space left on that side of the layout. I would probably move it.

I decided to show more of the patterned paper by layering the photo mats and letting the patterned paper shine on top.

With the bold patterned paper photo mat right next door, I decided to keep this one a little more subtle. I cut the top photo mat a little smaller than I normally would to show the bursts around the outsides.

Here's the full left side. I. am. in. LOVE.

I just love how this layout turned out. It's so much fun to play with patterned paper and see how you can turn the volume up on an already fabulous layout to make it just a little more special. Those disco bowling photos will look FANTASTIC on this layout now! Don't you think?

Let's Bowl with Patterned Paper additions.

And with that, we come to the end of our 13 Ways to Personalize your Page Kit series! It's been such a fun challenge to look at each of our new kits with fresh eyes and find ways to make them more special to me. If you've enjoyed it as much as I have, you're in luck! While I wont be revamping every kit we put out, I'll be choosing some each month to transform and blogging about it with tips and tricks. We'll be featuring new kits for sure, but also some of our wonderful classic kits as well! So let me know if there's one you'd love to see transformed or if there's a technique you'd like to see. I'm definitely up for the challenge! Until next time, Happy Scrapping!