Use Your Stash: Vellum

Another in a series on h0w to use what you already own! Today, we’re focusing on VELLUM.

First, a little bit of history…

According to Wikipedia, vellum was originally made from calfskin (ick!) that was wet, stretched, and scraped. Double ick. Thank goodness, modern “paper vellum” is vegan-friendly and is made from plasticized cotton (I have no idea what that means!). Anyway, it’s often used for tracing because of its near-transparency.

Nowadays, vellum is available in a variety of colors, prints, and sizes. It’s often used to lend an air of formality to things like wedding invitations. But we scrapbookers know it’s good for more than that!

I have a stash of vellum going back to my early days of scrapbooking when I used it on baby pages. But just to entertain you all, I’ve come up with a lot more ideas for using vellum, all of which I will tell you about now.

Simple Scrapbooking Projects with Vellum:

First, the cards. I immediately thought of using white vellum for a winter-type treatment. I sent it through my Big Kick with my snowflake embossing folder. Then I used it on two different cards. Here’s the first:

After I embossed the vellum, I trimmed it to 4.25×5.5″ and went over it with a blue chalk to bring out the edges. Then I adhered it to a light blue card, and tied a pretty ribbon. Simple, of course!

Here’s the second:

For this one, I punched a circle from the embossed vellum, punched a slightly larger circle in the black cardstock card, and added a little bit of Stickles. Here’s a closeup:

On this one, you can see a bit of the adhesive I used to attach the vellum circle to the cardstock.

Here’s a card I created using the stamping and “fussy cutting” I showed a week or so ago in the 3-D Handmade Flower post:

Of course, I added a bit of Stickle bling to the center of the flower.

And here is my favorite cardL

This is a cute invitation for Callie’s trophy induction ceremony (for more info on how I colored this cute doggy, and our family tradition of the trophy induction ceremony, watch this Copic Coloring video I made). I used a dialog bubble stamp to create the “Yay!” button, and cut it out.

Finally, the layout…

I used silver vellum in a couple different places. First, the photo mat. Next, I punched some butterflies out of the same silver vellum and added them for embellishment.

I may add a few more layouts over the next few days. I have some great ideas for more embellishments for layouts and a mini-album. Stay tuned!

Now, for some tips on working with vellum on your papercrafting:

1.  If you’re stamping on vellum, use Staz-On ink. It won’t smear. Test any other inks before using them so you don’t end up with a big smeary mess.

2. Adhesives — the vellum adhesives aren’t always useful. I would just stick with a glue stick, or glue dots you hide under embellishments so they don’t show.

3. Try different colors of vellum. There are some awesome ones out there! I have some red I want to use on a mini-album.

4. ALWAYS have fun.

Now, links for your shopping pleasure:

Vellum

Sizzix Snowflake embossing folders

Chalk set from Pebbles

Stickles in Stardust

Circle punch 2-1/2″

Staz-On Ink

Cotton Candy Stickles

Speech Bubble Stamps (use without the sentiment inside)

Martha Stewart 3-in-1 butterfly punch

P.S. the MotherLOAD Scrapbook Marathon starts this week! Are you in? You can still get $20 off with code load2011!!!