Fadeless Bulletin Board Paper

The photo real scrap paper in my craft stores is .59 cents each and up to $1.19 for the fancy, glittery type paper. I, of course, only buy paper when I can get it on sale from .25 to .33 cents, which still seems a lot to me. So, I've been keeping an eye out for cheap posters, wrapping paper and other materials to use for backdrops or scenery. Here's an alternative I really like:

Fadeless paper rolls are 4 x 12 feet and they come in plain and photo real options. The photo papers are meant to be viewed horizontally, which makes them very cumbersome for crafting purposes, but still worth it.

Each photo roll has an image on its side so you can get an idea of how it's going to look opened out. I only have 4 to show you but the other photo options are a beach scene, a mountain top, underwater scene, jungle leaves and the night sky. There is also one intended to be the back drop for a theater, but it's pretty much just curtains and not realistic ones at that.

You'll find these at Joann's for $7.99 in the kid craft/teacher planning section. I used 50% off coupons for all the ones I purchased.

At AC Moore they keep them in the foam board/poster board isle (not in kid's crafts) and they are $7.99 as well. AC Moore issues 55% off coupons sometimes, so even if you don't have one really close to you, both Joann's and Michaels' will take their coupons.

At Michael's you will find them in the kid craft/poster board isle, but don't buy from them if you can help it because,

they are charging $8.99 for them. The nerve! However, Michael's is the store that readily has the paper that looks like bricks, so.... yeah.

Anywho, scale photos!

Tatiana is our model today and she's standing in front of the grass and sky background. Some of the papers I wrapped around a tall box and others I'm draping over an ottoman. I used this paper in my last post, so this time I'll show you how you can break it up for multiple use.

I've turned my ottoman on its side so that it covers up all of the grass part and you get this nice blueish gradient backdrop. Since the roll is 12 feet long, you can always just cut a section of the blue part off if you want. But I would probably buy a second roll to cut if I were going to do that so I could have one intact.

You might think from seeing Tatiana stand in front of the entire roll, that the grass is too big, but it's not at all. Also, if you let the grass drop over an edge, it looks like she's on a cliff. I was afraid that the clouds were going to be completely off scale, but nope, and they are not as repetitive as they appear on the wrapper.

Behind the scenes tip: If you put a good amount of space between what the doll is standing on and your backdrop, you wont get any shadows from the doll on the background and you wont have to worry about hiding edges or showing spaces where edges meet.

The brick pattern is actually quite huge and you can tell that from even seeing it rolled up. However, again, the more distance between it and the doll, the smaller it appears. This first photo I'm using wood scrap paper as the flooring so you can see how it compares size wise to the wood boarder paper in the next picture.

Eh, the "planks" are pretty darn wide, BUT, I still like it. It's nice and earthy and "weathered" just as the name of the paper says. I would definitely recommend the wood and brick papers even if they aren't exactly to scale. I bet you can find other applications for them, like for houses, buildings in a distance, walls, steps, etc.

Here's the wood paper from a distance so you can truly judge the scale. Its pattern also doesn't repeat that often either.

One caveat to my recommending these papers is that they are fairly thin and if you are handling them by yourself, they are going to fold over, crinkle and just be generally annoying. If you can get someone to help you roll them out and back in again, it would be easier. If not, you may consider cutting them into more manageable sections. I'm keeping mine whole because I'm a rebel like that.

Bonus!

Walmart has these beach mats on sale but I found some on clearance as well for $2.00. They are 68 x 32 inches and would be great as outdoor walls or flooring in something Asian inspired. The weave is pretty tight and they roll up nicely. They smell kind of woody, but it's not bad.