Saturday, November 27, 2010

Thanksgiving Marathon, Part Six (A Tutorial)

Because I still have no mojo, and because someone asked, and because I cannot find the video I watched to learn this myself, I shall now show you how I made my paper wreath.

Here is the finished one so you can see where we're headed:

First step: cut 8 pieces of 3" x 1.5" paper:

Working with one piece at a time, do the following:

Fold it in half:

... then fold it in half again:

(That other piece of paper is just for perspective. It was not meant to confuse you. Sorry if it did.)

Next, with the open edge at the top, fold down one corner like this:

... then do the other one:

You have folded one of the pieces:

(Ignore those scissors. You don't need no stinkin' scissors to make this.)

Do the other 7 pieces the same way:

This is a nice, monotonous task. Good for occupying your hands while watching TV or ... whatever.

Time to start the assembly process. Take two of your folded pieces:

Notice those open edges:

You will use these. Remember these. Now hold one of the folded pieces in one hand, then holding the second folded piece in the other hand, put the two pointed ends of piece 2 into the openings of piece 1 (the openings I showed you with those handsome arrows):

Don't you just hate it when someone does a tutorial and they do the "this is really easy" part and you don't get it? And it doesn't look easy? That's why I took another angle of this to see if it's any clearer:

See the pointy ends of piece 2 (on the right) sticking into the openings in the top of piece 1 (on the left)?

Once you get that part, you are home free. This is how the first two pieces look pushed together:

Don't worry about that "pushed together" comment. All will become clear once you start adding pieces. Just add the next piece's pointy ends into the open ends of the previous piece. (Keep it G, people.) Here is my third piece done:

Keep going until you have 6 of your 8 pieces nested. Then I like to put # 7 & 8 together separately:

Then put that onto the other 6. You can try it one at a time - whatever works for you. Here it is with 8 pieces - almost done!

The last step is to put the pointed end of piece 1 into the opening of piece 8:

Ta-da! Here is your finished wreath:

You might needs to move the pieces around a little to make it even.

Want to see what it looks like with 10 pieces? Here I've placed the 8-piece wreath on the grid paper so you can see the size of it. I have two more nested pieces waiting in the wings:

I just pulled the wreath apart at one section and added these two others to get ... a 10-piece wreath:

... and for giggles, I did one with 12:

So there you have it! Easy-peasy, right?

If you still have any questions, please let me know!

Now I think I'll go make some more Holiday cards (the ones I said I wouldn't make any more for this year) and see if I can salvage my last failed attempt and get rid of some UFOs. Wish me luck!

And thanks for stopping by!

5 comments:

  1. wow............beautiful.nice tutorial

    ReplyDelete
  2. I LOVE these!! I'm gonna make squillions!! :D Hope they turn out like yours. Well, they may be a tad more fussy. Cuz you know how I like fussy. ;) Thanks for the tut!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! Now I know what I'm going to do with my Sunday afternoon - and with all the Christmas paper I've bought, since I seem to have lost the desire to make cards though I haven't lost the desire to purchase paper. (And thus ends the longest run-on sentence ever.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm intrigued. I may have to try these this week... thanks for hte step by step!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you for the detailed tutorial. Your ornament is very cool.

    ReplyDelete

I'd love to hear what you really think! :-)

PS: I've had to disable Anonymous comments, because the spammers were killing me. If you are unable to comment, please email me your comment and I'll get it posted for you. Sorry. (stoopid spammers)