How to Do Paper Piecing in Scrapbooking

Paper piecing in scrapbooking is the use of pre-cut pieces of paper to decorate scrapbook pages or define themes. Nearly any scrapbook page is a candidate for paper piecing. If you do scrapbooking as a hobby, you should know how to do paper piecing to make your scrapbooks the best they can be.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Pattern
• Stiff paper
• Colored card stock paper
• Plastic bag or box for storage
• Glue
• Drawing materials
• Scrapbook pages

Prepare Your Paper Piecing

1. Get a pattern. You can draw a pattern yourself, purchase a pattern in a craft store or download one to your computer at home. If you are drawing your own pattern or printing one out that you downloaded, make sure you put it on strong, stiff paper.
2. Cut out your paper piecing pattern.
3. Place your paper piecing pattern over colored card stock paper.
4. Trace the paper piecing pattern onto the card stock. Repeat on papers of different colors until you have as many tracings of the pattern as you want.
5. Cut out the tracings.
6. Cut the tracings into recognizable pieces. For example, on a tracing of a bird, you would want to cut out the wings, the beak, the feet and the tail feathers.
7. Set the tracings aside until you are ready to use them. Storing them in a plastic bag or flat in a small box will help keep your paper piecing flat and in good condition.

Apply Paper Piecing to Your Scrapbook

8. Glue your paper piecing pieces together to form the image from the pattern. Use the pieces from different colors of paper to create a more interesting picture. For example, on a bird pattern, you could use blue paper for the body, yellow paper for the beak and orange paper for the tail feathers.
9. Draw in any details you like. You can use felt-tipped pens, markers or chalk for this. One popular technique is to trace the edges of the picture in chalk, then smudge the chalk line inward in order to create a three-dimensional look.
10. Use the adhesive of your choice to affix your paper piecing picture to your scrapbook page.

Tips & Warnings

• Save time by cutting out your paper piecing patterns in advance. You can do this while performing another activity, such as watching television or talking on the telephone. Then, put away your pieces until you are ready to assemble them for your scrapbooking project.