Printing on Vellum
By Angie Felix

Do you love the look of the journaling done on vellum that you see in all the magazines and idea books? Want to know how to do it yourself? It’s easy!

As long as you have a computer, printer (a laser jet or inkjet) and some sort of word processing program, you can easily add computer journaling to your cards, altered books or scrapbook pages. Be aware, though—it’s addicting!

You’ll want to set up your journaling on the computer in accordance with how it will fit on your page. If you want a 4”-wide paragraph of text to fit in a particular spot on your paper craft project, make sure that your journaling is not wider than 4 inches. Also, remember that you’re not restricted to printing horizontally on your vellum. By selecting the appropriate settings, you can easily print in a landscape mode instead of portrait, meaning that you can create longer page titles perfect for a border on a 12” x 12” page—just cut your vellum down to 8 1/2” wide. In addition, you can adjust the page margins to help you line up the journaling as you want or give you more room on the page.

Also, be sure to pick a font that fits well with the project—there are tons of font collections out there and also a lot of free ones online.

Hint: Since vellum is expensive, it’s always best to do a test print on scratch paper or plain copy paper. This will allow you to be sure that your journaling will fit your page or project and that it looks as you wanted it to.

When you get your journaling typed out and have run a sample print to be sure it looks right, you’ll be ready to print onto your vellum.

Since vellum is a delicate paper, you’ll need to adjust some of the settings for your printer in order to get the best quality print possible. The most important thing to remember is that vellum, unlike plain copy paper, is not porous. This means that the paper will not quickly absorb the ink like other papers—you’ll have to be careful of how much ink your printer lays down on the paper.

To change these settings on your printer, go to your “print options” or “printer settings” menu. Here you’ll select the size of your paper, and then adjust ink output settings. To minimize the amount of ink, we recommend setting your printer to the transparency setting. Transparencies, similar to vellum are non-porous, so by selecting this setting, your printer will use less ink. You’ll also want to select the “light” setting in terms of ink output—this will give you least amount of ink possible, resulting in less smearing and quicker drying times.

You can also minimize ink by using thinner fonts instead of thick bolded letters and prevent smearing by allowing a little bit of room at the top for the printer to grab hold of the paper before printing.

Once you’ve printed onto your vellum, be sure to let the piece of vellum dry before handling it. To speed up the drying process, you can hold a hair dryer on a low setting several inches above the vellum (don’t let it get too hot or you’ll warp the vellum, causing it to curl). You can also put clear embossing powder on the printing and shake the excess off, then use a heat embossing gun held 6” from the vellum to dry the ink.

When you’re ready, attach journaling with brads, eyelets or vellum tape.

Printing onto vellum gives you endless possibilities—journaling a family story for a heritage layout, typing a heartfelt greeting for a handmade card or adding printed vellum words to tags for embellishments. No matter what you do, have fun!