Everything Papercraft - Chipboard

Chipboard is a wonderfully versatile product that is very popular in paper-crafting. It's basically compressed, unbleached paper pulp that is coated, coloured or shaped to make embellishments and alphabet pieces for scrapbooking, card-making and other paper based crafts. It can be cut with scissors or blades, coloured with paints, inks and dyes, stamped, embossed, stitched or textured.

Some uses for chipboard:

• Cover chipboard pieces in glue and place tissue paper on top. Allow the tissue paper to wrinkle and let dry. Apply another coat of glue and tissue paper and when dry, trim edges and paint with chosen colour. After the paint has dried you can rub over with gold or any metallic finish to bring up the texture.
• Another method is to paint with an opaque colour and when dry, stamp part images on top.
• Bring out your crackle paints, memory mist or dye inks and let the colours soak into the chipboard.
• Press the chipboard into a clear Versamark stamp pad and apply embossing powder. Heat for a beautiful shiny finish.

Hot Tip Tuesday

Chipboard

Don't let this fabulous material end up in the bin! Harvest chipboard pieces from packaging, books and boxes and use the large, intact pieces to create mini album and journal covers. The smaller pieces are great for die cutting embellishments - providing the material isn't too thick - while the tiniest pieces of chipboard are an excellent alternative to foam tape. Just add glue and sandwich between the surface of your project and the embellishment or image you want to pop-up. It's inexpensive, does a great job, and best of all, reduces waste.

Hot Tip Tuesday

Every now and then I feel inspired to create an off the page project like an altered book or canvas, and most time I like to add words to my creation. It's often the case that the chipboard letters I have in my stash are missing a letter or two that I need to complete my title. Instead of rushing out and purchasing yet another packet (and ending up with two hundred letter X's) I will attempt to construct the letter I need using what remains in the packet. In the photos below, I've shared my technique for creating an "e" from pieces of other letters that always seem to be in excess...

I firstly construct the "bones" of the letter -  in this case I've used a "c" and part of a lower case "q", which I was able to cut with a sturdy pair of scissors. The letters are glued to the canvas and allowed to dry thoroughly.

Next, I apply texture paste over the joins. I use a palette knife to get a nice flat surface.

Shaping tools are useful to push and shape the texture paste around my new letter.

After allowing everything to dry thoroughly, I give the letter a light sand to remove any rough spots. Once the gesso, paint and mediums are applied, you won't see any difference between my newly created letter and all the other letters on the project.