Weaving Paper Strips

Add interest to any layout with this technique that yields many variations. You can achieve this look using one sheet of paper, one coordinating collection, or several papers from various collections. It all depends on the style you are after.

After placing a background paper and your photo(s), pick out papers you'd like to weave together.

Use the Marquee Tool to select a portion of the paper, then drag and drop onto your layout. You can make your strips all the same width, or vary the widths.

You need strips laid both vertically and horizontally. You can leave space between the strips or cozy them up right next to each other. You can vary the strips you use, having the same or different numbers of strips in each direction.

In this example, you see a background paper with three horizontal strips and two vertical strips, all of varying widths.

You may find it handy to rename your layers by right-clicking on each one in the Layers Palette and choosing "Layer Properties." I renamed these layers "Horizontal Stripe," "Vertical Purple," and so on.

Rearrange your strips in your Layers Palette to get them as close to woven as possible. In this example, notice that the first and third horizontal strips are placed over the first vertical strip and under the second vertical strip. The second vertical strip will need to be cut to look woven and achieve an over-under, under-over look.

To achieve a woven affect, some portions of some strips will need to be removed. In the example, the vertical striped strip is the only one that needs to be altered. It currently is positioned over all three vertical strips, but we want it to appear to be under the plaid strip. Because there's no way to do this by simply repositioning the layers, we must cut the vertical striped strip of paper.

To do this, hold down the Ctrl key and click on the horizontal plaid strip's Thumbnail in the Layers Palette. Then, in the Layers Palette, click on the vertical stripe layer and hit the Delete key on your keyboard. Repeat on different layers as needed to achieve an over-under or under-over effect for each paper strip.

Finally, add a slight drop shadow to each layer for a realistic look.

Layout by Betsy Lombardi

Tutorial written by Betsy Lombardi