Make Good Use of Your Ephemera

Tutorial #5 for CraftSassy
By Victoria Warren-Mears

I have a lot of stuff, I have saved over the years. Some of it qualifies for vintage, some antique, and some simply lovable retro. For this example, I chose to use cards that were sent to me and my parents when I was born. I will use this paper to scrap some baby pictures of me for my heritage album.

The first step is to gather your vintage ephemera or new stuff that you think would make a fun patterned paper.


I scanned each image individually and saved them as jpg files. You can however scan your images as a pleasing collage that you arrange on your scanner bed. My scanner only accommodates a width of 10 inches, so I find it easier to design 12 x 12 inch paper with individual images that I manipulate in Photoshop Elements.

Open the images in your photo editing program. You will need to crop them each to the desired shape.



Save them as the cropped image. I use the same file name as the scanned image to save space on my computer. I don’t really need to save the original scans for any reason.

Open a new custom file, I use a 12 inch by 12 inch file, at 350 pixels/inch. For this layout I chose a white background.

For layer one, I chose a photograph of a rose. I copied it by using layer, duplicate, and send to untitled – 1. I manipulated this layer and made it 40% opaque to preserve the coloring of the rose, yet not make it a focal point. It appears as a wash of color in the background.

Next copy each image you would like to use by using layer, duplicate, and send to untitled – 1. I do them one at a time, so I can manipulate and place them as desired. On this paper I added a low drop shadow to each card to give some depth to my image. You can also adjust the saturation and opacity of each layer to give the retro look you desire.

Once you are satisfied with you arrangement, you are ready to save and upload in the CraftSassy Storefront.