Scrapbook Friday - What papers & colors should I get?

Welcome to another Friday of Scrapbooking 101. Today we will focus a little about papers, colors and some practical books. I know, you all been waiting for some hands on scrapbooking, but we have to cover the basics first before we can start. Otherwise in the middle of creating you might find out to picked the wrong album or papers.....well and I don't want to be the one to tell you so ;-)

Cardstock vs. Design Papers

Let's start with cardstock:

Cardstock comes in a variety of colors, qualities and paper weights. Usually cardstock is a little bit heavier than your regular design/ patterned papers. Close to My Heart offers a variety of colored cardstock and they are 65lb (cover weight)/ 175gsm. Our Daisy White cardstock is 80lb (cover weight)/ 215gsm. I know those numbers might not mean much to you, but they can come in handy if you try to find the right kind.
If you cardstock is to heavy, you will have difficulties scoring, bending or even cutting the paper. You cutting blade might get dull very quickly.
If your cardstock is to thin, well boxes you make might get out of shape or cards and pages are just to flimsy. Cutting these papers often comes with a challenge too because they have the tendency to fray and get fuzzy along the edge.

Our CTMH cardstock has the perfect weight to create boxes or other sturdy projects. It also works perfectly fine as the base for your scrapbook page. But what I like the most about our cardstock is that you get two tones of color for one price. While one side is showing a darker hue of the color, the back side has a light hue of the same color. I can't tell you how often this has come in handy.
I also like that the cardstock has a white core. Which means if you tear the paper you will have a white edge or if you run it through an embossing folder you get little pieces of white to show through. Not all papers have a white core, the majority is dyed through with the same color.

There are so many companies and colors out there, but the problem is to match the colors with your pictures and design papers. Not every red is red!!! What I like about the CTMH concept is that our cardstock always works with the design paper packs and you can always count on the quality and to get more if your need. Even when a color is retired, you still will find one that works. While colored cardstocks are a great investment, you should never go with out some natural colors. Colors like beige, browns, greys and everything in between and don't forget to get some black and white.

Design Papers/ Patterned Papers:

One company calls them design papers others call them patterned papers but they are the same. What it means is papers that have a design or pattern on them. Some show the design only on one side, while our CTMH design papers are called double-sided. Yes, you get two different designs on one sheet of paper. One package of design paper contains 12 sheets, 2 of each design. The all work with the same colors and cardstock which makes life really easy for us. You even get two sheets with a variety of tags, strips and other embellishments on it for you to cut out and use on your pages.

Again the beauty about choosing one company for both, cardstock and design paper is that everything matches and is easy to combine. And you always get extras if needed.
This been said, jup there are so many other companies out there that offer cute design papers. And I admit I have a few of them in my stock too. Sometimes it is just to hard to find a matching color beside a neutral one, but if the design is cute, we make it work ;-) right?

Design papers are usually a little bit thinner than cardstock, our CTMH papers are about 100lb (text weight)/ 150gsm. A bit thinner than cardstock but still sturdy enough to use it as a background paper for your pages. I sometimes use these papers as background, but if you want to stretch you money and create a set of multiple themed pages from one paper package, try to use cardstock as background paper and cut the design paper as accent pieces... this way your paper pack goes a long way.

I will have one more Friday for you to show you where to find inspirations on scrapbook page layouts before we dig into the creative part. By then I will show you how you can use either of these papers for your scrapbook pages. So stay tuned...and thanks for stopping by.