Happy Crafting to our TTD friends!
This week is going to be fun! Texture is H-O-T in scrapbooking and one of the most popular textures to hit the scrappy world (other than woodgrain) is BURLAP! It is a true eye pleaser. If you are scrapping a layout, making a card or altering your next masterpiece, check out some great thoughts on how to incorporate BURLAP... now how about we get to it
a thought on BURLAP TEXTURE....
By: Steffanie Seiler and Joni Parker
Burlap is a woven cloth created from jute, hemp or flax fibers. These plants are not known for their silky or cottony textures, so the result is a coarse fabric with a large weave pattern and natural beige coloring. (information source: www.wisegeek.com)
Not sure how burlap can work on your layout? Here are some ideas:
- layer a large piece behind photos or patterned paper
- use a strip of burlap as a border
- add interest by fraying the edges
- cut into shapes such as circles, flowers, stars, banners, etc.
- change the color with paints or mists
- use as a mask for mist or modeling paste
- use your stamps to create backgrounds or titles on burlap
This is the perfect season for finding burlap as it’s traditionally associated with Fall. Usually sold by the yard at reasonable prices, you can find it at most local craft or fabric stores. Many places even offer other colors besides natural, such as black, green, orange and white.
Let's see what those Thoughtful Girls have come up with!
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Beth’s thought: Several weeks ago I purchased a yard of burlap. I thought I'd try making some die cut or twisted flowers, like I'd seen in a magazine recently. Then I looked up my assignment for this week and it was burlap. What a happy coincidence! After experimenting with several sizes of dies I determined the larger the better. The large weave of the burlap frays easily and the smaller flowers fell apart. Fray Check (a sewing aid that prevents fraying) would have probably solved the problem. The bleached burlap takes spray ink easily, and I was able to create two toned flowers. I love the texture and earthy feel the burlap brings to my layout! Don't be afraid to experiment with burlap yourself, it is very inexpensive.
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Andrea’s thought: Burlap is so in style right now and I love the look of it on scrapbook pages! I wanted this page to have a vintage feel to it so I used very neutral colors and patterns to make the bright colors on the pictures pop. I used the burlap to matte my photo and add the frayed look around the photo. Burlap is so versatile that it would look good with almost any color!
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Steffanie’s thought: I have used burlap on layouts and projects before and love the look and texture that it provides. Until now though, I had only cut circles or strips. For this project I wanted to try something different. I had an idea to combine burlap with another trend---pennant shaped banners. I cut the triangles using a piece of chipboard for a pattern. I found my biggest challenge to be keeping the triangles from unraveling as I worked with them. I just had to be careful and not over handle them. I chose these photos taken on a recent trip to a peach farm. I thought the burlap played in very well to the farm theme since you can often find burlap there and the color of natural burlap fits in well with the outdoors because it looks like...well, dirt. I also found that the burlap banner at the top provided good balance to the wood-grain paper running below my photos. Overall, I love the texture and home-grown feel the burlap added to my layout about going to a peach farm!
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Amanda’s thought: I had a *DUH* moment as I was working on this page. I pulled out my burlap to find that it wasn’t burlap! I had a nice stash of canvas, but no burlap. Silly me. And being as I procrastinated this post until late, I couldn’t simply run down and buy some burlap. So my mind got to thinking....hmmm....how can I use burlap without burlap? I then realized it would be a great opportunity to show that texture and layering can be achieved in a digital format as well as paper. (Great Tip Amanda! When you are in need of the right texture or embellishment, search for digital elements and create a hybrid layout!) For the burlap, I found a download of a burlap texture. I used the cookie cutter shape and cut it into hearts. I think it made a simply adorable accent with this digital Echo Park paper. It’s easy to combine digital textures in your pages to create more interest. And with a few basic skills in Photoshop Elements, a hybrid page can be easily achieved as well! So don’t let being a digital scrapper scare you from some mediums. If you have burlap lying around, you don’t even need to download a file, just snap a picture and use the digital picture! You can use this same technique for any texture you want to photograph and incorporate into a digital or hybrid page.
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Sally’s thought: Burlap is a wonderful way to add texture on any project! When I think of burlap for some reason, I think of fall. And maybe that's because the burlap colors I had were in orange and browns. So I finally decided this challenge would be great to scrap these Harvest dance photos of my daughter. I had considered making fall leaves out of the burlap but once I got it all out and started playing with it, I decided to make these fun circle elements and add buttons on them as well as to create a layered flower with them. I then cut out some simple leaves, pulled out my green embroidery floss and created a few "veins" on my leaves. I added the orange strip across the left side of the layouts as well as the little banner/pennant to the top right to create texture throughout the layout. Don't forget how much interest is added, especially on straight cuts, when you pull one or two of the strings off of each side, like you see on the orange strip, making it look frayed. I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge and was thankful for the fun reminder to get this wonderful product out of the draw and use it! ****************************************************************************************
Heather’s thought: Burlap- what a cool texture to add to scrapbooking projects! I love the awesome "feel" that burlap adds to layouts. I originally thought of layering burlap with my patterned paper on this page, but then the idea popped into my head that I could use burlap for a background. I tacked the burlap on the page with a little help from my ATG (glue runner). A tip on that-- put your glue on the paper, NOT on the burlap. Burlap is very loosely woven so if you try putting a glue runner on the burlap, the burlap will stretch and look terrible. And you will be disappointed. So, after I lightly adhered the burlap to the paper, I stitched around the edges of the burlap a couple of times with my sewing machine, adding an "X" pattern through the center of the page to help secure the burlap. I really like this technique because it holds the burlap very well! After that I just built my page from there! One last thing- I thought the duck saying, "Dare Devil" was too funny. I have had this journaling card (from October Afternoon) for a while and never thought of a clever way to use it. Now I can say it is on a page!
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Joni’s thought: I love burlap’s natural neutral color and the awesome texture it can add to a page and it was perfect to maintain the “rustic nature” feel for this older photo of my son in a tree. I also love that it can help “hide” a busier background paper. So that is how I’ve used it on this layout. I wanted to keep the “hint” of the pattern paper, but not have it overwhelm the layout, so the burlap is really nice to achieve that and also add some texture. I also used some of the little strings that I pulled out of the frayed edges of the burlap to make a nice little embellishment border to ground the photo. I also changed the color of the burlap in two ways, one by using a sponge tip and dipped it in ink to make border lines in the burlap around the photo and second by simply dripping on some red mist.
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Do you have some ideas of your own for using burlap? We would love to see them. Please share your work of he{art} with us and your thoughts on using burlap by using the link below.
Lovely work, ladies! So fun to see the different ways we all used burlap!
Posted by: Steffanie S | Thursday, October 11, 2012 at 10:23 AM