Tutorials

Origami leaf wreath

November 19, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

This has been add-on week on Sketch Support, and today my project is live! Please head over to grab the sketch so you can use it in your own crafting, and while you’re there I would love it if you would leave a quick comment for me. 🙂

Here is a look at the add-on project I made.

The origami instructions I used were quite easy to follow.

This add-on sketch made me think of origami because of the lines radiating from the center. So I searched online for instructions for making origami leaves similar to the sketch, and I chose this one: Origami flower leaf. I wanted to make enough leaves to create a fall wreath for our front door, so I rummaged through my stash for patterned papers that would go with it and found an older pad of Cloud 9 papers that included the russet of our door mixed with brown, turquoise and gold. I started folding!

The leaves were rather easy to fold, though I would caution that if you’re going to try this yourself you should consider using patterned papers that are on the lightweight side. I used these sturdy double-sided papers (because the colors worked for me, and I wanted to make sure that if the undersides showed they would look good), but my fingers paid the price. 😉

Once I had enough leaves in an assortment of patterns and sizes, I hot glued clusters of them together before arranging and hot gluing them to the wreath base (which I purchased at Hobby Lobby). Hot glue is such a great tool for projects like this; it made quick work of the assembly.

I then created a few rolled flowers using cardstock, misted them with iridescent gold Glimmer Mist and nestled them in among the leaves. And now it decorates our front door! Here’s close-up of a few of the leaves.

I used 3- and 4-inch squares of patterned paper to make these leaves.

Rosette pumpkin tutorial

October 18, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 10 Comments

Blogtoberfest Day 18

I was in Archiver’s about a month ago looking at new scrapbook products and saw a pretty 3D pumpkin they had made. The store was out of the printed instructions for it, so I took a good look at the sample and came home to try my hand at recreating it. Here is what I produced and what I learned along the way.

Gather your supplies: cardstock, adhesive, hot glue gun, scoring board, stamps and inks

Rather than use printed patterned paper for this I wanted to create my own with cardstock and stamps. For one thing, I really don’t use this technique very often, and I wanted to stretch myself creatively. Second, I wasn’t at all sure how many pieces of paper the pumpkin would take to finish (it ended up being 5), so I thought it would be a good idea to be able to make more as I needed it. I have amassed quite a collection of doily stamps since that trend began (but haven’t used them as much as I’d like), so I decided to pull them all out for this project. I selected a number of beautiful distress ink colors and set to work creating my patterns. Aren’t those doilies yummy?

Cover your cardstock with stamped images.

This pumpkin is made of stacked rosettes, so I knew I would be doing a lot of scoring. To save myself time I scored each whole 12×12 piece of paper at one time (every half inch) and then cut it into strips. To make this stack into a sphere shape requires making rosettes of graduating sizes. I have listed all the strip sizes below. Each rosette is made with 2 strips of equal width, so cut 2 of each size.

Score the whole 12x12 page at once before cutting the strips you need.

Number and size of paper strips needed to complete the pumpkin rosettes

Strip width	# Strips	# Rosettes
2 inches	2	1 (for the bottom of the stack)
2-1/4 inches	4	2
2-1/2 inches	4	2
2-3/4 inches	4	2
2-7/8 inches	4	2
3 inches	2	2

Accordion fold all strips and create your rosettes. I figure that rosettes are so common in paper crafting these days that many of us have made them before, so I’m not including instructions for that part of this project. However, there are probably hundreds of tutorials out there on how to make these little beauties—both in video form and still photo/text—if you haven’t yet tried your hand at them.

Cut all your various strips and accordion fold them.

Once you have a stack of rosettes, apply hot glue to the center disk of cardstock on each one and adhere them together. Start with the smallest rosette and stack gradually larger circles until you’ve used the largest one, and then start decreasing again. Once you’ve used all your rosettes, you’ll have your base pumpkin shape completed! Here is the order to follow:

Bottom of the stack: 2-inch rosette
Next up: 2-1/4 inch
2-1/2 inch
2-3/4 inch
2-7/8 inch
3 inch
2-7/8 inch
2-3/4 inch
2-1/2 inch
Top rosette: 2-1/4 inch. I preferred to leave off a top 2-inch rosette to avoid making my pumpkin look too much like a pineapple!

Stack the rosettes to create the pumpkin shape.

Cut two 1-1/2-inch strips of paper for your pumpkin’s stem. Apply wet glue to one side of the cardstock and start rolling it into a tight cylinder. When you’re about to the end of the first strip, slide in the second and keep rolling. Wrap rubber bands around the roll until it dries.

Apply glue to 2 long strips of cardstock and roll them tightly.

Now it’s time to add some flair to the stem. Cut another 1-1/2-inch strip of the same paper and snip fringe along its entire length. To make sure that I had enough room to apply my glue to the bottom of the strip, I drew a line to guide my fringe cutting. Then wrap the fringe around the bottom of the stem. Bend, curl and primp that fringe until it suits you.

Cut one more 1-1/2-inch strip of paper to use for the fringe.

I used my Silhouette to cut some maple leaf shapes. To add texture I ran them through a crimper then spritzed them with a few colors of Glimmer Mist. Pretty!

I cut out some maples leaves, ran them through a crimper and misted them.

Add the leaves (I used three) with glue dots. I also cut some very thin strips of paper, curled them and glued those at the top center.

Use glue dots to add leaves and curly-ques to the top of the pumpkin.

Use hot glue to secure the stem to the base. You’re finished! And you have a beautiful fall decoration to add to your home. 🙂

Once you add your leaves and stem, your pumpkin is complete!

It occurs to me that one last step that could really add a lot to our little pumpkin is to spritz it with a few hits of pearl Glimmer Mist. I may still do that to mine!

You know that if you make one of these I need to see it. Please leave me a comment with a link to your version. I really enjoyed making this little guy, and I hope you’ll give it a try.

Blogtoberfest Day 11

October 11, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

BOOkmark tutorial + freebie

This wee worried monster is quite happy to gobble up your book while he holds your place!

Have you seen any of the fun tutorials for making monster bookmarks—the kind that fit over the corner of the page and look like they’re eating your book? Well, I decided to try my hand at making a few, and in the process I created a Silhouette cut file to use for them. If you like this project and have a Silhouette, I would be happy to email you the file if you send a request to janice at theconstantscrapper dot com.

Here’s how mine turned out. I made one into a little worried monster and the other into a little cross-eyed jack-o’-lantern. I think they’re darling:

Slide these little monsters over the corner of your book and let them nibble while they hold your place.

STEP ONE
Email me a request for the Silhouette cut file. 🙂 Once you cut the pieces, this is what you’ll have:

These are the pieces you'll have when you use the Silhouette file.

STEP TWO
Glue the smaller accent square to the center of the background piece. Then glue the teeth to one of the side triangles.

Glue the accent square to the square portion of the bookmark background.

STEP THREE
Take a close look at the side triangles and determine which is a sliver smaller than the other. I made the cut file this way so that the sides would lay flatter when you fold them in. Fold the smaller triangle down first. Then apply adhesive to the back of the larger side and fold it down; press.

Fold down the smaller triangle side first.

STEP FOUR
Glue the accent triangle piece to the front and decorate!

I made this one into a jack-o'-lantern!

You’ll notice that I didn’t use the accent square on the green monster bookmark. That’s because I wanted to have his mouth look wide open and feature a slithery tongue. These little guys are so easy to make, and there are a ton of ways to make them different and fun. Wouldn’t they be great to make with your children so they can take them to school and give to friends?

If you make any of these I would love to see them. Will you please leave me a comment and let me know where to look? Now book to your supplies and make some monsters!

Blogtoberfest Day 7

October 7, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Travel chess/backgammon set

Here’s a little different way to use your stamps and cardstock. Just buy a wooden cigar box, wood stain and shellac and make a travel game board!

When I made mine I first stained the cigar box. Then I stamped the background image on sheets of tissue paper and adhered them to the lid with mod podge. I measured and created a triangle template to use for the backgammon board, stamping the gold pieces with various designs and leaving the black ones plain.

Then I measured and marked the chess side of the board in a grid that would allow me to line up my stamped and plain square pieces. I lined the sides of the chess board with the stamped tissue paper to match the backgammon board.

The backgammon markers are flat-bottomed glass beads. I painted the bottoms of half of these pieces in black and the other half in bronze. The tiny chess pieces were rather hard to locate, but I finally found them in the miniatures section at Hobby Lobby! I stained half of the pieces and painted the other half in black then burnished them with bronze wax.

I covered the outside and inside of the game board/box with a few coats of shellac then gave it to Matt for Christmas. I actually don’t think he realized it was homemade at first!

So consider breaking out your stamps for a little altered project if you haven’t done that in a while! And I hope you have a great weekend. 🙂

This travel chess set was made with stamps, cardstock and a wood cigar box.

I found the little chess pieces in the miniatures section at Hobby Lobby.

The backgammon side of the game board used glass beads as markers.

My first guest blog post!

June 29, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

Hello, and welcome to my visitors who have come from Live. Teach. Create. I am very excited to be the guest blogger today on Jennifer’s site and so happy to have you here!

If you have arrived here some way other than from Live. Teach. Create., I hope you’ll check out my tutorial there. Here’s a sneak peek:

As a gift to you for coming to my site today I’ve also created a FREEBIE to go with the tutorial. It’s a template to use if you want to create your own crocheted circle on a page. You can download the PDF below. It’s based on my manual trial-and-error version and is designed to save you lots of time. I do hope you find it useful.

Crochet-on-the-page instructions and hole punch template – The Constant Scrapper

I would love to hear your comments—let me know what you think of the tutorial. And I would so love to have you come back and link up any projects you make using this idea.

Happy crafting! 🙂

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