Chipboard |The Multipurpose Paper

Of all the things you could do with chipboard paper inside your home furnishing, do you know that it is a brilliant krafting medium as well? Chipboard is an extremely versatile paper product that can be used in many surprising ways in your various art and crafts ideas.

But as you may know already, you cannot use all kinds of chipboards interchangeably. Some of them are way too thick to be handled without proper equipment. So for the matter of this article, we will stick to chipboard sheets that are suitable for krafts and printing. 

Let us start by introducing you to the types of chipboard sheets: 

Kraft chipboard 

We are already familiar with kraft paper. Kraft chipboard paper is made from recovered fiber and recycled papers very similar to kraft paper. We already know chipboard is a thicker recycled paper typically used for making chipboard boxes or many krafts that require strength. 

Kraft Lined chipboard is largely used for industrial level of packaging meant for storage and transportation. Because of the recycled nature of this product it is way more friendly to the environment than plastic. 

Clay coated chipboard 

This is a recycled variety of chipboard that is coated on one side while being gray or brown on the other side. The clay coating makes the chipboard suitable for printing, waterproof and more durable. 

This also means that the clay coated chipboard is slightly more expensive than the regular recycled  brown or gray chipboard. 

The clay coated chipboard can be used for a variety of displays and signage as well as regular scrapbooking for crafts. 

Gray chipboard 

You must have seen a gray chipboard in many places since it's as versatile as any chipboard sheet. The only difference is that you may not know that this is also a variety of regular brown chipboard.

Grey chipboard at ThunderBolt Papers is distinctively gray because of being manufactured from recycled newspapers. It is a thick kind of chipboard that is used in a variety of ways such as cartoons, book covers and even shoe boxes. 

Because of its rough finish, gray chipboard is easy to write, paint or stamp on and execute different crafts with, and thus proving to be a favorite among brands that wish to advertise their use of environmentally sustainable products.

Carefully pick one or all kinds of chipboard sheets you can find and the following ways to decorate chipboard while crafting. 

Here is how you can decorate your chipboard

• Try glitter

A little glitter goes a long way, not only is that true for make-up but also in craft. 

Rather than painting the surface of your project board try to cover the whole area that you intend to decorate with adhesive and carefully but generously sprinkle glitter over it. 

Then allow a few minutes for the glitter to set over the paper and then shake off the rest of the glitter. 

• Use different color mediums

Because of the peculiar surface that chip board has you can use many ways to put color on it. One of the most obvious ways is to use paint to color the whole area and the chipboard is thick enough to not crumble under paint's weight. 

Then, you may also use spray paint as needed for larger areas, but you may not be able to cover the brown or gray color of the chipboard entirely as the spray colors are semi transparent. You can work your way around it by using multiple layers or different colored layers but remembering to allow each layer to dry before moving on. 

As a part of an excellent craft activity with children you can encourage them to use dry colors such as crayons or pencil-colors to decorate the chip board as they like.

• Utilize the Scrap paper 

We all know how fun scrapbooking as an activity can be for children as well as adults. Chipboard fits perfectly through the whole process of scrapbooking for making anything from stickers, cutouts, corner frames for photos or even album covers.

You can put all your leftover paper scraps together with a chipboard to add another decorative dimension to your scrapbooking hobby. Just remember to allow any paint to dry first to move on to using adhesive.

Now that you know chipboard can be used in not just making sturdy packaging material or different shaped boxes,  you can use them in just about any crafting activity by simply adding some embellishment ideas. Let us know your experience when you try these techniques with the chipboard next.