Every once in a while, a kit has patterned papers and I love each and every one of them. But there is no way I can use them all on my layout. Or could I? Hmmmm. In today’s blog post I am going to show you three ways to incorporate various patterned papers into your layouts.

Paper strips are a great way to showcase patterned papers into your layouts. The great thing about them is that you can make them vertical, horizontal or even diagonal. This particular technique creates some fantastic background layers.

This layout was created with Traci’s True North collection and was lifted from a layout scrapped by fellow creative team member Nichole. The background was created with diagonal strips and then filled in with various papers from the collection. When putting it together, I made sure that the strong linear patterns were centered in the strips like the stars, anchors, etc.

This layout uses Traci’s Manuscript collection and is a lift of a layout from fellow creative team member Cassie. The background is comprised of vertical and horizontal stripes of patterned papers. I even added a pattern to the scallops. I finished it off by adding a pattern to the heart. This collection works well for mixing patterns because it has a neutral color palette. These colors tend to not look busy when combining multiple patterns and seem to always look great together.

A fun thing to do to add patterned papers to a layout is to use it to fill in shapes. Pretty much any shape works for this technique. You can use them in your background or keep them front and center.

This layout uses a heart template from Designed by Soco as well as I think all of the patterned papers in Traci’s Smitten collection.

In this fourth layout I used a template from Designed by Soco and Traci’s Island Time. I used six patterned papers in this one. Here I pulled more subtle patterns out of the kit to fill up the squares in the background layer. Subtle patterns or monochromatic pattern papers generally always look good together. Also smaller glimpses of papers are sometimes easier to use together if the patterns are bold.

I hope you use these tips and techniques to add some more patterned papers to your layouts!