Design Your Own Fabric and Scrapbook Paper

One night a husband and wife were talking. The wife said, "You know what would be cool? If I could print my own fabric." In another house, miles away, a similar conversation took place involving scrapbook paper. The husband said, "Make your own darn scrapbook paper." Two companies were born and now people all over the world are able to design, print, and buy their own fabric and scrapbook paper.

Design Your Own Fabric

Spoonflower is a relatively new site dedicated to printing your own fabric. It is free to sign up and you can purchase fabric designed by others. But, the real draw is the ability to upload your own designs and see them come to life on high quality cotton fabric. At $18 a yard, it is pricier than your average fabric store. You can also get a swatch for $5 or a fat quarter for $11. Even though it is quite a bit more in price, the chance to have your own design on fabric could be worth the extra. If you've ever searched high and low for the perfect piece of fabric to complete a project, you know the value of just being able to make it yourself!

Spoonflower has a blog where they show some of the fabrics made by their users and each week they have a contest for the fabric of the week. That fabric is then available for sale in the Spoonflower etsy shop for a week and the winner receives 5 yards of fabric for free. I can't wait to try it out myself!

Design Your Own Scrapbook Paper

CraftSassy offers a similar service but for scrapbook paper. I actually got to try out the process and use some of the scrapbook paper. Basically, you upload an image and you can have it printed on high quality scrapbook paper in a variety of sizes. I used two different images and made some 12X12 pages and 6X6 pages.

The most difficult part of the process was deciding on an image to use! This paper is also a little pricier than your average scrapbook paper. But, you are paying for the service and the ability to make it exactly how you want it. Looking at it that way, it seems like a bargain at $2 a sheet (price varies for sizes). One thing that appealed to me about this company is that they allow wholesale orders. How fun would it be to design your own line of scrapbook paper and have them available to the public?

Do you have it in you to become the next Amy Butler or Basic Grey? With all of these new opportunities online, it has become even easier to share your designs and creations with the world. If you decide to design your own fabric or paper, I hope you'll share what you made with us here in the comments. We'd love to see them!

image courtesy of Christy Nelson via flickr