Going gaga over "Washi Tape" - Tutorial

I recently discovered the magic of Washi Tape or Masking Tape: this little Japanese transparent tape that you can scratch, use and reuse all the time. People use it for scrapbooking, letter, organizing, calendar and packaging.

Since it is full season of baby shower for me, I have to do a lot of packaging and love making it a little personal for each of the packages. I quickly learnt that with a little imagination and computer skills you can do miracle without spending any money.

Here is some of the supply I bought.

Even if I have very happy with my purchases, I started to want more, with my own logo or with printing sentences and turn to my computer for ideas. Pinterest is a good start. I was able to see what was possible to do. Unfortunately, I didn't have all the graphic softwares that were needed. So I resumed to my imagination and my skills to make it happen.

Here is an example of how I made some Liberty digital washi tape


Warning: You need to know Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop at an advance level or enough otherwise I might look like it is very complicated. I hope the picture are helping.
I am a beginner myself.

What you need:
- Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop or Photoshop Element (software)
- Scan
- Liberty fabric pictures or scan (work with any other print or fabric)

1 - I made a washi tape template (feel free to use it)

2 - Open Photoshop and clean the template, make the background transparent

3 - Then open Illustrator, place my new clean template. I made a colored background so I can see my template.

4 - Made my washi tape into a vector picture, (click on live trace, then expand) and change color to white

5 - Place the fabric scan picture, trace in color and expand then drag it to your swatch.

6 - Then select you washi tape vector picture and apply swatch.

7 - Copy and paste back in Photoshop and make a photo collage with your new digital washi tape. Adjust transparency if needed so it looks like a real one when you print on paper.

Repeat process a much I you like and creat many different washi tape.

Enjoy!!