Have you been to Michaels lately?
Step inside and you may wonder what month it is. My local Michaels has two medium-sized displays of Halloween items and right behind them are 10 aisles filled with Christmas merchandise.
Nothing like getting a jump start on your holiday scrapbooking.
I didn’t have it in me to browse through all of the Christmas-themed supplies; however I did notice that Michaels is having a sale on cardstock. If you are planning to do a lot of scrapping during the holidays, now is the time to stock up on cardstock.
Generally, you can purchase cardstock in weights ranging from 60 to 110 pounds. Light-weight cardstock is 60 pounds, medium-weight cardstock is 70 pounds to 80 pounds, and heavy-weight cardstock is 90 pounds or more. The heavier the paper, the more durable and expensive it is.
Most scrapbookers prefer medium-weight cardstock. The 80-pound weight is extremely versatile and works especially well if you are crafting a scrapbook that doesn’t include plastic page protectors. If you don’t have that added layer of protection, it’s best to use heavier cardstock weights to increase the durability of your layouts.
Heavier cardstock also comes in handy if you tend to use a lot of brads, eyelets, or metal charms on your scrapbook page designs. The thicker paper offers the needed support to display the heavier embellishments without compromising the overall look of your layouts. This is especially true if you sew items onto your pages. Heavy-weight cardstock is ideal for this technique, though I wouldn’t use it for paper piercing. I also wouldn’t recommend heavier weight cardstock to make origami embellishments. When using the Japanese-inspired folding technique to decorate your layouts, stick with very light-weight paper which makes creasing easy.
Finally, one of the main reasons most scrapbookers use medium-weight cardstock is because it works very well with die cutting machine such as the Cricut. While you can adjust the settings on these machines to make detailed cuts on cardstock of varying weights, using 80-pound cardstock seems to yield the best results.
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