I thought I’d share a few more scanner papers that I created a little while back. As regular visitors may know, I love the simplicity and directness of scanner art, and think it’s a great way especially to make your own special wrapping paper for small gifts.
Coloured elastic bands – an old favourite!
I experimented with the following:
- Buttons
- Coins
- Feathers
- coloured matchsticks
- torn up pieces of tissue paper
- Confetti created from hole punches in different coloured paper
- Postage Stamps.
This one was made with postage stamps and a coloured paper background. I think it’s my favourite!
I think next time I’m going to try using some old family photographs, and experiment with pieces of coloured wool, embroidery threads or string.
This one simply uses colourful buttons.
In order to get the best results, bear the following in mind:
- Make sure you keep the scanner glass clean. This is most important as even a few tiny specks can ruin your finished paper.
- Make sure you scan at 300 dpi for nice sharp printouts – (my scanner always defaults to 72 dpi unless I change it).
- If you want a coloured background for your paper, lay a piece of coloured paper on top of your items to be scanned.
- If necessary (and I found it nearly always is) do a little editing of the scan afterwards – nothing fancy is required, all I had to do was increase the brightness, and occasionally the saturation of the colours to get a good result. Even the most basic image editing software will let you do that easily.
And this one uses coloured matchsticks…
This one uses brightly coloured feathers…
And finally – coloured dots from punching holes in paper.
There’s lots more scanner art to explore on Artful Adventures if you’re interested:
