Backgrounds to the fore!

Lately, it's struck me how fabulous quilling can look when set against a background of patterned papers. Until now, my card designs have mainly utilised photographs or simple digital graphics as backgrounds for quilled motifs, so I thought it was time I started experimenting with more elaborate patterns. Instead of purchasing a pack of patterned papers from the craft shop, however, I decided to try and create a few of my own digitally using Photoshop so that the designs could be printed directly on to card.

Here's the first one I came up with ... starting with a basic 'textured paper' image, I simply added an array of flower and leaf images from Photoshop's impressive range of 'brushes':

Then I made a plainer one to complement the first, using another little shape from the Photoshop brush 'library'.

Put them together, and here's what you get:

The design at the top of this post utilises another combination of the same two 'papers', manipulated digitally in Apple's Pages software to create different backgrounds for quilling.

I think these papers bring a much softer touch to my card designs.  There's plenty of potential here!