How To Use Vellum!

Vellum is one of those incredible crafting mediums what when used properly can add so much to a simple layout or card. The trick with vellum is finding a way to adhere it to your project in a way that doesn’t show through the transparent paper. Once you’ve mastered the adhering, vellum can be used to add a layer of interest over a solid colour or pattern. Vellum is also great to use as a way of toning down, or muting a pattern so that either your photos or journaling can stand out and be the visual focus of the layout or card.

Let me show you some of my tricks as well as a layout and card that came together super quickly using vellum!

First up we have a scrapbook layout of my little ones with my grandparents. It’s pretty special that my kids get to know and love their great-grandparents, so I absolutely love any opportunity I have to get these photos into their albums. On this particular day, I wasn’t having any luck with the camera and any photo that my daughter looked great in my son was all fussy or in mid-motion and visa vera. I have long learned in the days of digital photography that I should never just take one photo – so I just kept snapping and then when I went to print these photos for the layout I actually cropped the left side with my daughter and Opa from one photo and my son and Oma from another photo. Since I matted them separately, it all worked out and it looks like I took one large photo and cut it in half!

I used the beautiful rose vellum from the Countryside Comfort collection for this layout in two ways. First I used it as a base for my two photos and title strip. I simply laid out my photos and title strip with even spaces between the mats and took my ruler to measure what I would need to cut the vellum at to get an equal border around all sides. I adhered the photos to their mats using The Tape Runner and then the mats to the vellum and then when I wanted to adhere the vellum to my layout base (which I chose to be a really beautiful pattern from the Countryside Comfort Paper Pack), I just made sure to only put Vellum Tape Runner Refill behind the mats and title strip. That way when I adhered the whole vellum piece down there was no adhesive showing through at all — it was all hidden!

For journaling, I wanted to add a strip of vellum off to the side of my title. I adhered this down two different ways: the first was that I used a portion of a border sticker from the Countryside Comfort Stickers to adhere the left side of the vellum strip down. Then I wrote my journaling using the Black Dual Tip Pen and then added small amounts of the Vellum Tape Runner Refill to the back side of where I had written words. With a little vernishing when placing the strip down the Vellum Tape Runner Refill completely disappears!

Next, I want to share with you a quick card I whipped up. I wanted to use a busier patterned paper from the Countryside Comfort Paper Pack as a background so using a strip of vellum under my title was a great way to help it pop and be easy to read.

The card base itself is 8-1/2″ X 5-1/2″ scored at 4-1/4″. I cut the vellum strip to be 2″ X 8-1/2″ so that it could wrap around from the back of the card to the front of the card. To adhere the vellum to the back I used some Vellum Tape Runner Refill. Then to help it keep flat on the card front I adhered my Burnt Orange ABC/123 Stickers and sentiment from the Laser Cut Everyday Sentiments to the vellum strip and then put adhesive on the back side of where the words were so that it isn’t noticeable at all that I’ve hidden the adhesive!

I hope this has inspired you to give vellum a try — there are so many fun ways of using it on your layouts and cards!