Tutorial Series – 15 Ways to Use Straight Ribbon Day 1

I am excited to share a series of blog posts that will demonstrate 15 different ways to use straight ribbon on your digital scrapbook pages and projects. You can adapt them to brag books, hybrid projects and cards, too. Make sure you use the subscribe options on the right sidebar so you don’t miss any ideas!

When I was a paper scrapper, I amassed a respectable collection of ribbons to use on my pages and especially to tie to cards. I used them FLAT a lot of the time just because of the bulk of adding bunches and knots on my pages. My paper scrapbooks are already PLENTY thick with all the layers of papers and photos (and I do love me some buttons too). Of course we don’t have these thickness problems in digital scrapbooking but straight ribbons are a really good staple to have in your scrapping arsenal because they are so versatile.

For these lessons, I am using ribbons made from my Instant Ribbon Templates. These ribbons are EXTREMELY versatile because YOU add the color to them on separate layers so your dots and patterns don’t get muddy and YOU can adjust the look of the texture and edge layers so that they look right with ANY color you want to use. Scrappers can quickly make a perfect ribbon to match a kit they are working with. Designers can use them to accurately reproduce colors for the kits they are making for resale. There are 24 ribbons in the pack To thank everyone for their interest in this series and making it the best read series ever posted in my blog, you can get 40% off this product in my store with coupon code RIBBONS40OFF.  Product available HERE.



So what’s the FIRST way to use a straight ribbon on a page?
----> as a border <----
It’s pretty simply but adds a lot to a page. You can place a ribbon and a strip of paper to any side of your page to create a rectangle area in which you set up the rest of your layout. A rectangle is a special and pleasing design element for your pages that can easily be created. Here are some examples:

You can add scallops along one or both of the edges for a little more folksy look, too.

Next, you can do double borders, for a little bit different shape rectangle, and again there is room for the scallops if you wish.

You can make your page borders very wide or very thin depending on where you want to place your photos and titles. If it’s thin, the paper can peek out of both sides of the ribbon, too.

THEN you can take this a step further and update the look of your pages a little more if you want to start matting your page with a paper border and even doing a little tilting. This can be done with ANY of the above ideas so I’ll just preview a few of them to give you and idea of what I mean because the possibilities really start to explode now!

Are you getting excited? I know looking at all these ideas makes me want to get scrapping!