Questions for Designers RE: Paper ???? - SBB Digital Scrapbooking Forums | Scrapbook-Bytes

acheese89 · #1 (**permalink**) 05-28-2006

O.K. designers, if I could pick your brains. How in the world do you come up with these fantastic paper patterns? You don't need to give away all your secrets to me, I'm just curious, can you scan patterns from things like fabric, rugs, clothing, etc. and legally use them if you change them a little? If so what percentage do you have to alter them? Or are you drawing things by hand, scanning or using a tablet? Some of these designs are so fabulous and I would love to try to get into it a little more. I think I can do the embellishments, but I'm really stumped on papers other than stripes, solids and polka-dots and such. I created some paper using Photoshop installed shapes put together to make a flowery pattern, I suppose that's OK too isn't it. Thanks for any tips or comments!

danib · #2 (**permalink**) 05-28-2006

Quote:

can you scan patterns from things like fabric, rugs, clothing, etc. and legally use them if you change them a little?

in short.. NO. but you could scan (for example) a piece of burlap and use it as a texture. The fabric texture you see in most papers is done with a filter or overlay or another method

Quote:

Or are you drawing things by hand, scanning or using a tablet?

Lots of designers draw their patterns or the shapes to make the patterns. You can also draw with pen and paper then scan it, works great when you do not have a tablet.

You CAN use the preset shapes that come with your program. I have made a ton of preset shapes very fun to design those as well.

shelleyrae · #3 (**permalink**) 05-28-2006

and Dover software is a popular way of getting imagery. http://store.doverpublications.com/index.html

acheese89 · #4 (**permalink**) 05-28-2006

Thanks for the info about textures and the clip art! So clip art can be used commercially (Dover anyway?) I didn't know that! That answers a lot! Thanks again.

shelleyrae · #5 (**permalink**) 05-29-2006

Not all clipart but there rae many commercially available software packages of deisgns that can be used for commercial projects including Dover, Hemera, Nova Art Explosion - type in "commercial clip art" or illustration or graphics into google and you can wander around the net for hours and find plenty of sources. Just double check terms of use and image quality specifications ( some packages look good and rave on about high quality but are only 72ppi images)

acheese89 · #6 (**permalink**) 05-30-2006

Thanks for the tip ShelleyRae! I'll be sure to check out image size and quality! Off to look!