More of Those Paper Strips

Good evening to you all! Before we get back to my tale of paper strips, I would like to share a much-belated Happy Mail card I received {gasp} last week.

Isn't this pretty? I see she caved and got some sort of die-cut apparatus. Perhaps Nestabilities, perhaps some other brand, but would you look at that bottom layer?

Velvet!

Check it out! So pretty. And a nicely-tied bow, to boot! See Jess? Still stuck! So whatever adhesive you used, it was the right one! :-)

(Oh, and please appreciate that this picture is almost in focus, too. I thank you.)

Now let us get back to that paper thing I was playing with (with which I was playing) the other night. The technique I had in mind that I thought I was following is called bargello, and in last night's reveal, I also provided links to a most-excellent tutorial (done by someone who knows what she's doing, as opposed to moi) plus a page of amazing projects.

Okay, maybe what I am doing is NOT bargello, but I do take the first few steps of that technique and use it to craft simpleton quilt-type patterns. So let's see if I can do a better job this evening.

First, I took a bunch more 1" strips of the Porcelain Prints DSP and laid them out. The first one is taped down to the piece of printer paper which, in hindsight, should have been left whole. The other pieces are just sitting there, waiting their turns to be taped. You can use this opportunity to arrange the colors the way you want them before you stick them down. Always a good idea.

Next, I turned the paper 90 degrees, trimmed the edge straight, then cut 1" strips, which gave me lotsa strips of 1x1 squares all in a row.

I laid those strips out on another scrap of printer paper. Notice how I lined up the strips. Then I taped them all down to the paper.

I trimmed the edge. Then I cut off the right-most striped square from each of the strips, because I did a poor job of planning. Here's why they needed to go ...

... you take the parts you cut off and move them to the top of the staggered strips. I even set them there loosely for demonstration purposes. Now do you see why that striped square needed to go? It would have been totally unacceptable to butt that striped square up against another. Just awful-looking.

But this got trimmed and stuck down to form ...


This! Okay, it's not perfect, but that is okay, because I did not plan to use any of the edges. If you DO want to use the edges, then don't be like me, and YOU get the edges straight.

This is the die-cut piece. I did end up turning it and making it into a square, because I had several problem-children edge pieces that either were not stuck down well enough (why using tape for the paper strips is a bad idea - please learn from my mistakes), plus the edge pieces were so small, well, they just had to go. So I put the cut piece back in the Big Shot and made it into a square to lose all those pesky problem pieces.

At this point I needed the ribbon. See that tiny piece of blue ribbon on my work space? I sat there looking at the mess, and could not find the spool. I actually thought I'd gladly pay someone $5 if they could only find that spool of ribbon for me. But it would have been a trick, because it was hiding under a pile of papers over there on the left, so even if I'd posted this pic, you could not have found it. So I didn't. By the way, any of you non-stampers out there? This is not an unusual scene. I'm just sayin'.

Ta-da! My finished project. This will go directly into my box for this weekend, as I seem to be selling a lot of Birthday cards these days. New blood is always good.

Moving on, I thought I'd take some of the remaining 1" strips and cut them into 1/2" strips, mostly because I was sick of the 1" ones, but also to try a more bargello-like project.

I schmeared this piece of scrap printer paper with my glue stick and proceeded to lay down the strips of paper. They stuck real good!

I turned the paper 90 degrees, trimmed the edge straight, then cut 1/2" strips.


Here they are just laid out. Isn't that purty?! This, I believe, is closer to true bargello. I am not sure I'd ever take the time to do all the patterns like the kimono in that link from last night, but this much is still fun to try.

Well, my SU workshop order arrived today, so I need to dig into it and divvy it up into my customers' orders. I think I got myself a little something, too. :-)

Thanks for stopping by!