June 09, 2008

Scrapbooking Never Tasted So Good: Custom Candy Bar Wrappers

By Kara Hiltz

PrinTale: Create Custom Candy Bar Wrappers With Your Printer Courtesy of Susan Westberg's Scrapbooking By Swanky

[Editor's Note: Today, we introduce a new Databazaar Blog feature — PrinTales — profiles of interesting people and their printers. To kick off this new feature, we have prepared a series of articles featuring a group of extremely talented crafts and scrapbook artists who also happen to blog about their creations. We hope you enjoy this series and other forthcoming PrinTales.]

Traditionally, crafts projects have revolved around physical items. You cut, paste, arrange, and glue or tape until you achieve the result you're after. But many crafts enthusiasts, like Susan Westberg, now turn to their computer and printer for a helping hand with their craft projects.

Susan Westberg has a passion for scrapbooking that's 10 years strong. She even owned a scrapbooking store until she decided to close shop so she could spend more time with her young daughter.

Today she maintains a scrapbooking blog, Scrapbooking By Swanky, so her friends, family, and fans can keep up with her latest projects. She uses her printer primarily for titles, preferring to keep her scrapbook journaling handwritten. "If I'm not at my scrapbooking table, I'm at my computer creatin something that will most likely end up in my scrapbooks," Susan told us. "I enjoy sharing my creations and hearing from people who read my blog."

Her tools of the trade include an HP LaserJet 1100, which prints only in monochrome, and an HP Photosmart D7460, which she uses for printing pictures and colored images.

Susan's advice for getting the most from your printer: experiment and know what your computer has to offer. She taps her WordPerfect knowledge to work with fonts, Text Art, and shadow effects for her printed page titles.

Susan has also created her own letter stencils from heavy cardstock by printing large letters and then cutting them out. To get your alignment just right, she recommends printing on plain white paper and using it as a placement guide before you print on your patterned paper. And don't forget to allow extra space so you can trim the final product. This trick also works for vinyl lettering, which is "hot" in the scrapbooking community these days according to Susan.

"Use your imagination and the possibilities are endless," concludes Susan. "I have even printed temporary tattoos on my color printer."

Use Your Printer to Make Susan's Sweet Candy Bar Wrapper in 10 Minutes Flat

Below we explain how to re-create Susan's candy bar wrapper, which she recommends as a way to use up scraps from other projects. They make great gifts and party favors.

1. Purchase a candy bar.
2. Use scrap paper to create the striped base, which is 5 1/2" x 5 1/2" square.
3. Wrap the paper around the candy bar, taping it along the seam in the back.
4. Create the burgundy matte by cutting a piece about 4 3/4" long x 1 3/4" wide.
5. Affix the matte to the striped candy wrapper using double-sided sticky tabs. (Place it slightly more to the right to make room for your fibers.)
6. Type the text you want to include on the wrapper in your word-processing program. Susan used WordPerfect's CAC Camelot font type with a 32 point font size.
7. Insert a sheet of crackle paper into your printer and print the text.
8. After printing, cut down the crackle paper to about 4 1/4" long x 1 1/2" wide.
9. Ink the edges of the crackle paper in brown ink.
10. Adhere the crackle paper onto the burgundy matte background.
11. Wrap fibers around the candy bar edge and cut them to length. The fibers provide some depth and texture according to Susan.
12. Place a small piece of tape across the back of your fibers to make sure they don't slip off the candy bar.

Our sincerest thanks to Susan for sharing her project with us. Just one problem. That wrapper looks too nice to tear apart. I wonder if we've stumbled onto an idea for a fad diet. Hmm.

About PrinTales
If every picture tells a story, then every printer must contain several bookshelves' worth. In PrinTales, we bring these stories to you by profiling people who use their printers in a creative manner. Think of it as "once upon a time" for the digital generation.

• June 10, 2008 June frm Scrapbooking by Design

  I love your candy bar tutorial. It occurs to me that digital scrapbookers could easily scan a candy bar wrapper into the computer and decorate it digitally as well. You give me a lot of ideas for scanned objects ...

• June 11, 2008 Christi

  Susan, this is an absolutely gorgeous project. Such a fun idea for fun gifts!

• June 14, 2008 Susan Westberg

  Thanks girls! You should try and make one ... so easy!!