How Inspiration Can Grow

Lorie and I are hosting the blog this week and even though we aren't focusing on the same theme, every post I make will hint to things she is going to cover the last half of the week. See how astute you can be :)

I got this in the mail last November. I was immediately drawn to the stocking in the upper right corner. I thought that looped look would translate well into a scrapbook element on a page.


I made this layout as the result:


I love the texture it added to the page. The next month, I felt like I needed a little something extra on one of the pages I did for the gallery.



I took the idea of pleating and turned it into a flower, then just recently I found another way to pleat this is very very cool. I thought I'd share some pleating techniques with you. I should start with the pleating tutorial, which I was asked to do last month (but time got away from me and it never happened), but when I started playing with the flower idea, I got a little carried away. So today you'll get flowers and tomorrow you'll get the plain pleating tutorial. I'll follow that with the new technique I learned from my friend Ronda. I hope you'll get some ideas of how you can incorporate pleating on your own pages and cards.

For the flowers, the first one I did was just a straight strip of paper, folded. But I thought I'd try using a scalloped strip to see what that added. I love it! And I am probably the last person in the world to learn how to scallop your paper, but in case I'm not, I thought I'd add that to the instructions.


1. Cut a strip of 12 inch paper, this example is about 1.5 inches:


2. You have to have this type of corner rounder, the one with the removable guard. Take the guard off.


3. Flip the punch over so you can see the cutting device and insert your strip as shown.


4. Move to the end of the first scallop and punch another, continuing along the entire strip.


5. This is how the strip should now look.


6. At every dip in the scallop, you'll score or fold. I drew a line to show you how to do this, but once you get the hang of it, you won't have to draw a line.


7. Next you'll score/fold on the diagonal. For this flower, I chose to fold to the middle of each 1 inch mark, again, I marked it with a pencil so you could see what I did.


8. This is what it will look like when all folded vertically.


9. This is what it will look like when all folded diagonally as well.


10. This is what it will look like when the entire strip is folded correctly.


11. Bring the one end around to the start, my flower didn't use the whole strip, I made it a little bit tighter, only using about 9 inches. Play with the folded/pleated strip until you can form a flower, tucking in the tail and trimming to fit.


12. And this is the finished product. I just glued it to the card and added a button and rub on. :)


I wanted to see what would happen if I folded at a different angle. This is where geomotry comes in handy. A smaller angle gives you a looser flower, and a bigger angle will give a bit tighter flower. This is an example of the smaller angle.


I also tried the technique on ribbon, using a needle and thread to catch each fold. And finally I tried just the strip, but changed the width of the strip. The red flower is the result of a 1.5 inch, 1 inch, and .5 inch strip.


I hope I've explained this technique clearly, it's amazing how many different things you can create when you start with one piece of inspiration and change it up a bit.

Tomorrow: pleating tutorial :)