Paper crafting includes card making, scrapbooking, memory keeping, home decorating and more. According to the Craft and Hobby Association, scrapbooking has become a 1.4 billion dollar industry as of 2020. Scrapbooking paper is one of the primary supplies for card makers, scrapbookers and home crafters. It comes in many designs and styles, including gold foiled and glitter-embellished versions.
How It's Sold
The paper is sold in three main ways:
- as individual sheets
- in sheet packs
- in paper pads.
The sheet packs and paper pads group together multiple colors and prints that coordinate with one another, making it easy to mix and match the paper. Individual sheets give you the freedom to choose only the patterns you love.
Standard Scrapbooking Paper Sizes
Scrapbooking paper is sold in several sizes. The most common are the standard 8 1/2-by-11 inch and the 12-inch-square sizes. Many scrapbooking albums are sold in these sizes or with inserts that accommodate these paper sizes.
Additional Paper Sizes
As card making and other paper crafting avenues have grown in popularity, so has the variety of scrapbooking paper sizes available. Most craft and scrapbooking stores now carry paper in smaller sizes, such as:
- 6 by 6 inch
- 8 by 8 inch
- 4 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch
- 5 1/2 by 7 1/2 inch.
These sizes each have their own purposes and benefits. The 6-inch-square and 8-inch-square sizes both fit into smaller scrapbooking albums, such as small vacation albums and brag books. Because they're already cut down to size, they can easily be used as background papers in albums.
The 4 1/2-by-6 1/2-inch and the 5 1/2-by-7 1/2-inch papers are perfectly sized to be used as decorative mats for photographs. Standard photograph sizes are either 4 by 6 inches or 5 by 7 inches. These coordinating scrapbook papers provide a 1/4-inch border the whole way around photographs that are mounted on them.
Coordinating Accents
Full-sized papers, smaller papers and colorful accents are often designed to coordinate with one another in scrapbooks. A single collection of prints and colors will have multiple paper pad sizes available. You can use them together to create dynamic photo albums with visual interest. Letter stickers), stamps, border strips and chipboard embellishments are common scrapbooking supplies sold to be used in tandem with scrapbooking paper.