Made With Love - Making Your Own Backgrounds

Hi everyone! I'm excited to show you some card I've made for the Made With Love Design Team. Made With Love is a craft store in Singapore. If you're living in Singapore, drop by the store! It's at a mall called Somerset 313. All products showcased are available at the Made With Love store.

Today I will share three cards today and I'm showing 3 different ways of making your own background. 

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of background stamps but sometimes, making your own custom background is kind of fun too! Literally, any stamp set you have can be used to create your own custom background/patterned paper. Here are some samples that I've done for today's post.

Look #1 

This is probably my favourite way of doing it because I used the rainbow colour scheme. I love it. It makes a card bright and cheerful, and you can't go wrong with rainbows ;) . 

I started out by stamping that somewhat heart shaped stamp (from the Basic Grey Hero Arts J'adora Hello Stamp Set) all around the Ranger Watercolour Paper. I tried to stamp it in different directions to create some variety. You can stamp it any way you prefer. And then, just go nuts with your watercolour. I used various Distress Inks for this but you can use anything you want.

To add you sentiment, choose a dark bold colour because it could get lost in all those colours. I chose to use a black heart that I just cut out by hand and added a birthday sentiment from the  Lawn Fawn Year Two mini stamp set.

Look #2

I used the flower  (from the Basic Grey Hero Arts J'adora Hello Stamp Set) and stamp it with the Ranger Distress Ink in Antique Linen. I like to use Antique Linen when I'm doing a "no-line" look on the image. This makes it look like I've drawn the image myself ;) This takes a longer time to colour (at least for me) but I do love the look a lot. So, I just watercoloured in the images using Distress Inks as well. I tried to be as careful as I can to colour within the lines. 

Instead of leaving the rest of the background stark white, I coloured the spaces with Antique Linen to give a subtle colour. A simple bold sentiment will do and you're done! 

Look #3

This method is super simple and I'm sure you can get very creative with it. I used my washi tape and randomly tape some geometric shapes. The washi tape will protect the paper from the watercolour and gives clean white lines between the shapes and colours. You can use thick or thin washi tape or even make you own shapes with some masking paper / post its. Just remember that if you're using watercolour, try not to add too much water or it might spread underneath the washi tape. 

I choose washi tape because the adhesive is not too strong that it will tear the paper but strong enough to stick until I'm done. 

I hope you'll find this sharing session fun and useful!