A Last Look At Pleating For The Week

I call this technique accordian pleating. In a prior post's comment, ErinM pointed out that she had made an accent for one of her cards using this same technique a month or so ago. I must have stuck that into my subconscious somehow. But last week I was scrapping with my friend Ronda and she had these cute little accents on one of her pages. I asked her how she did it, realized it was pleating, and the whole idea for this week's blog came together. This one is really easy and you can get some really unique looks, depending on how long your strip is, how tight you pleat, and what you use. I used one 12 inch strip, but you could glue two together and get an even tighter look. This technique does need to have a bit more precision, but I'll show you an easy way to do it!

1. Draw a line every 1/4 inch along the strip, a cutting mat is very helpful in this process.



2. Start folding back and forth, it should look like an accordian.



3. Put a dab of glue (again, I used Scotch Quick Dry) on one end of the accordian pleated strip.


4. Attach the glue end to the other end. I tried it first this way, trying to keep the circle flat, but I found it was quicker and easier to attach them the second way, making a ring.




5. Now comes the fun part. It got kind of humorous to get the circle to lay flat, best advice is to tackle from the top, pressing inward and downward. Lightly direct the bottom outward. You can leave it with a hole in the center, or squish the center tightly together, it just depends on the look you want.




6. Here's a really easy way to do it, if you have a way to score paper, like the Scor-Pal, you can just score your lines. Here I scored every 1/2 inch, but I have also done it every 1/2 inch then moved the strip over and ran another score at the 1/4 inch as well. Either way, you have easy easy fold lines now. You can click on the picture to see the details better.


7. Another example of how this works, using a wider strip of paper:


8. Another example of how this should turn into a flat circle:


9. Attach the accordian flower to your project with a nice juicy dollop of glue. It only takes a bit of pressure to make it stick.



The final result:


The surprise? I noticed that the tearstrip from the Sassafras paper I was using had NEARLY even scallops on it. I decided to fold at each scallop and got this, isn't it cute? So using the scallop technique I showed in the first tutorial, you could do something similar. Now I want to try different edges to see what I get. That's the fun thing about experimenting. If it doesn't work, I play with it until I get something that does.

The Long Awaited Pleating Tutorial

OK, pleating really isn't that hard, but since I promised a tutorial, I give you a tutorial on plain old pleating. I hope to see many many examples of this technique in the gallery now :)

I am so not a measure-it-all-out-neat-and-straight kind of scrapper. I tend to just mess with something until it looks just about right. So the pleating that I've done has always been uneven and not exact at all. I'm the same way when I cook, add a little of this, a little of that until it tastes right. So I hope that I can explain these steps clearly.

For this tutorial, I've used paper and ribbon, but you can use just about anything that will fold and bend. I used the Fabrips that occasionally come in our kits, those work well because you can easily change the size of the folds and not have to deal with creases. Experiment and have fun with pleating, it adds a lot of fun texture to your work.

1. Cut a strip of paper. Any size works, just depends on the look you want.


2. I made a line at the one inch mark and the 1/2 mark following it. Then I continued to make marks one inch after the last mark, followed by 1/2. So I did not mark every inch and 1/2 inch, I just made sure to follow the pattern of 1 inch, 1/2 inch, 1 inch, 1/2 inch until the strip was all marked. You can vary the measurements to get a deeper or more shallow pleat. That is the fun part of this, play with it!


3. I started folding one way, then flipped and folded the opposite way, over and over until I had finished the whole strip.





4. Once your strip is pleated, you'll want to attach it to something, yes? I like Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive and Zig 2-Way Glue. You'll have to experiment with the best way to get the pleats to lay flat, I find that working against the pleat is best for me. If you want your pleats to go left to right, I start with the right end and work toward the left. Vice versa if you want it to go right to left. Try it both ways, you'll understand more if you just do it... A bit of glue to anchor the starting point then a bead to catch the rest works well. You could also stitch them down with a machine if you wanted.




5. You can see the pleat repeats itself every 1/2 inch, remember our measurements in step 2? You can adjust the repeat by adjusting that second number.


Another example I made up is for pleated ribbons. If you are an exact measurement person, you might want to stop reading here :) I just eyeball ribbon. I think it works best to attach with a sewing machine, glue takes a while to dry on ribbon.

1. Tuck the end of the ribbon under itself and anchor it with a couple of stitches.


2. Start pushing the ribbon under itself to form a pleat, slowly stitch over that pleat and continue pushing, folding, and stitching. You can stop any time. But if you want to turn the corner...



3. Stop stitching about a ribbon's width from the corner and fold the ribbon sideways, so it's heading in the new direction you want it to go. With the needle anchored, turn the paper as well.



4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have stitched what you've planned. In this example, I stitched a rectangle, almost. I ran out of ribbon with only an inch left.


5. No worries if you run out. Just start a new piece by slipping the new over the old and hiding the new end under the last pleat. It's nearly impossible to see where you stopped and started.


6. The finished product:


So there you have it, the pleating tutorial :) I hope I've been clear enough in my explanation. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not a measuring kind of gal, so here's hoping it works! Let me know please. And thank you for all the nice comments, I'm happy that everyone has enjoyed these little tutorials.

One more tomorrow...

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 :)

Lifting Kelly... Part 2

Hi again, hope you are all having a great weekend!!

I am excited to show you my 2nd lift of Kelly's inspiring layout.

I wanted to show you how you can get two different looks using the same layout as your inspiration. Again, I loved the punched circles and the strips of paper that Kelly used in her layout so I used those again... only I placed them vertically on my page instead of horizontally. When using the general layout or design of a page for your inspiration you can simply rotate everything by 90 degrees and you will end up with another "sketch" to use for you layout!

Once I placed the strips and circles on my page it opened up a lot of possibilities for how I would place the rest of the elements on my page - photos, title, journaling etc. I already had my photos printed and I knew that I wanted to use the numbers and the title "There are so many things we love about you", so it was just a matter of playing around with it and moving things around until I liked it. At first I thought about placing the numbers in a vertical fashion going down the right side of the page (mimicking where the title is on the inspiration layout) but I just wasn't liking it so I moved them down under the photo and placed them horizontally. After adding all those numbers I didn't end up with a lot of room for my long title so I punched another circle and decided to just hand write it around the circle. Sometimes the title doesn't have to scream out at you... it can be small and subtle like this while the design elements take a more prominent presence.

To finish it off I added my journaling and some embellishments until it felt complete. It is fun to see that you can lift the same layout and get a completely different look. While both of my pages have the same general feeling to them because I used the same kit/color scheme and some of the same elements, they are both unique and different in their own way. Even when you aren't lifting someone you definitely don't need to feel like you have to reinvent the wheel every time you create a layout! If you have created a layout that you love, you can use the same basic design or "sketch" over and over, especially if you just rotate it like I did here.

The thing I love most about doing these lifts is that it makes scrapping super easy and it really takes away that stressful feeling of thinking you have to come up with something entirely new! Have fun doing your own lifts! Whether you lift someone in the gallery or you lift one of your own layouts, there are so many possibilities!

NSD Winners Announced!!!

The Grand Prize winners of the 6-month subscriptions are:
Leah Killian and staceymichu

The Widget winner of the $50 Studio Calico gift card is:
Scraps said...

Happy to have the widget on my blog. I would be even happier to win!!http://scrapsofinspiration.blogspot.com/

May 1, 2009 7:08 PM

The winners of the DT challenges are as follows (Please check back later and we'll continue to update as the winners are chosen):

• April's Mist Challenge: Stephanie (maste) won the Glossary add-on with this LO
• Tina C's White Space Challenge has a winner and a runner-up (thanks, April!): Katrina made this fabulous LO and Scrapper Jenn made this one and they each get a Bo-Peep add-on. YAY! Congrats, ladies!
• Davinie's stitching challenge: Vanessa won the Chiffon add-on and as a special surprise, two prizes were given, and Megan Klauer won the Peter Piper add-on!
  
• Stephanie's Something Old Challenge: Isabel
• Nicole S's PP Challenge: Stacey Hansen
• Nicole H's graph/ledger paper winner is: JBarksdale
• Jenn's Fabric Challenge (Bo Peep) winner is: Penny
• Tina A's Music challenge winner(s) are: Christina A & Amy Christine.
• Kelly's Ad Challenge winner: just g
• Joy's cutsie animal challenge winner: Amber Scurlock
• Scarlet's makeover your space challenge winner: cannycrafter
• Maggie's Typography challenge winner: lstudio
• Kirsty's winner: Kimber-Leigh
  
• Emily's self portrait challenge for the TAFFETA add on was picked randomly by her daughter. The winner was Leah:

All winners, please send an email to info@studiocalico.com with your name, address, and the prize you won by 8:00am EST Monday morning. Failure to do so will result in forfeiture of the prize.

A HUGE thanks to all that participated in the challenges. Boy, was this a fun day!

Lifting Maggie

Happy NSD!! I hope you all are having a great time scrapping the day away. There are some great prizes and awesome challenges, so be sure to get your layouts posted for a chance to win. :)Maggie and I are continuing with our "lifting" theme this week and I have a layout to share that was inspired by one from Maggie's gallery. I love Maggie's fun whimsical style...I can always spot her layouts. She is so creative with patterned paper and I had a really tough time choosing a layout to lift. But ultimately, I chose this one from the Garment District gallery...

I love the fun paper strips...so simple, but what an awesome eye-catching design! For my lift, I stuck pretty closely to Maggie's design with the large base of color (I used the artistan shaped paper as my base) and then the strips. I love how the journaling strips down the middle really bring it all together.

It took me less than an hour to put this page together. Coming up with a design is often the hardest part of scrapping, so lifting is awesome if you want to get some pages done quickly and easily. Happy scrapping!

NSD Festivities

In honor of National Scrapbook Day, we have lots of fun activities planned.

First, each design team member is hosting a challenge on their blogs and giving away past add-ons that have sold out, so you don't want to miss those chances to win. Click here to read more about the challenges.

Second, we are giving away a $50 Studio Calico gift card!!! To enter, all you have to do is post the countdown widget to your blog...see it's the top icon on the right ------>
Then, come back to this thread and make a comment with your blog address. If you've already added the widget to your blog, it's okay, you can still enter, just comment on this thread. A winner will be randomly drawn at 11:59pm EST on May 2.
(Instructions for adding the widget to your blog)

Third, and the Grandest Prize of All, we're giving away a 6-month subscription for you AND a friend. To read more about how to enter, click here.

Feel free to email us at info@studiocalico.com with any questions on these contests, or post to the message board and someone will be glad to help. Thanks and happy scrapping!!!

may g's picks

Lifting Kelly

Since we are on a lifting theme this week Kelly and I thought it would be fun to lift each other and post our layouts! Only, it was hard to choose a layout because Kelly has so much eye candy in her gallery! Wow!

But I finally just had to pick one and get going or I would have sat there looking through her layouts all day without getting anything done! :) Once I picked the layout to lift, I decided that I wanted to take it a bit further and show you how you can create more than one layout and get different looks even if you are just using one layout as your inspiration.

So, today I am going to share with you Kelly's layout and my first interpretation and then I will share with you another layout I created later this week.

As you can see I used a lot of the exact same design elements in my page that are in Kelly's page. I loved the general layout of the page and so I copied it almost exactly - the large strip of paper across the page, the punched circles tucked behind the large strip, the title going across the top of the page with the hand-drawn touches. Sometimes it is fun to look at a layout as a sketch and that is basically what I did here. Then you can lay out your papers, titles and photo in the same fashion as the inspiration page. It really makes creating a layout quick and easy!

Then you can also see that there are some differences as well. I want to point out that you can lift a layout almost exactly while still changing a few things to make it work for you. I only had one picture so I simply used a larger journaling block over on the right instead of adding more pictures. And then I added my embellishments in my own way in order to make it still feel like a "maggie" layout. You can also see that just by using a different color scheme, it makes both pages feel unique in their own way.

Later this week I will share with you my other interpretation using Kelly's same layout... so stay tuned!