Pretty in Pinkwheel

Here’s the first of two cards that I will be posting today. This one is lovely and bright! The challenges that I took inspiration from for this card are CASology and Color Throwdown. I’m also going to enter it to Craftyhazelnut’s Patterned Paper challenge.

I decided to use the  Freshly Made Sketches layout again, or something vaguely based on it. It seemed a good choice of layout for what I wanted to do.

The CASology prompt is “spin” which is open to interpretation. Initially I was thinking of making a spinner card (so it would have a moving part) but not having made one before I was a bit unsure. Plus I didn’t have a particular idea for what the spinner card would be. I don’t have any stamps that could be interpreted as spin either. Eventually I decided I would make an origami pinwheel.

The Color Throwdown prompt is to use hot pink, teal, black and white. I remembered that I have inks that are kind of hot pink and teal, so I figured I would use those. Black and white of course are much easier to tie in!

I started by looking up how to make an origami pinwheel. I found this tutorial which was very helpful. The tutorial didn’t give proportions though, so I wanted to do a test run to work out what size I needed to do. I also wasn’t sure if the pinwheel would be double sided (I was considering doing one side of the paper pink and the other teal).

For my test run I used a square post-it note. I scribbled on one side so that I could easily see the difference between each side. The results of the test run showed me that the final dimensions would be the same as the size of the square (so a 7,5cm square gives a pinwheel that is 7,5cm from point to point), and that it only uses one side of the paper.

Based on the size of card base I had available I decided to use a 9cm square of paper. I used a pink/peach paper and rubbed it with the hot pink ink pad to get the colour I wanted. After giving it a couple of minutes to completely dry I folded the pin wheel. (If you’re doing this, start with the coloured side down and follow the instructions in the tutorial. It’s really easy!)

Once the pinwheel was folded I found a brad and pushed that through the middle. If I’d had a choice I would probably have gone for a black one, but the bronze coloured was all I had. I think it works well enough.

I found a strip of black and white patterned paper to use as the strip for the card, and worked out how I wanted that positioned in regards to the pinwheel. Then I started to think about how to do the stick. After discussing with husband I decided to cut down a kebab stick to use, and then rubbed that with my teal ink. (Be careful if you do this. You may end up with splinters in your ink pad. Ask me how I know… Luckily they were easy to pick out with a pair of tweezers!)

I cut a piece of white paper to mount all the components onto. I chose my sentiment to use (from my Avery Elle Petal Panel set) and stamped that on with the same teal ink. At this point I realised the paper I’d used was a bit too thin, as the sentiment bled slightly but never mind.

Finally I assembled the card. I stuck down the black and white patterned strip, then carefully applied glue to the stick and pressed that into place. The glue made the ink run a bit, which then smudged the paper slightly… For the pinwheel I used foam tape, leaving a gap where the stick would be, and pressed that in place over the top of the stick.

With the whole lot assembled I used my tape runner to apply adhesive on the card base and stuck the panel into place. And that was that. All done.

I like how this card turned out. The bright colours are lovely, and the simplicity of the card works really well. The smudges are frustrating, and the picture makes it clear that I got some of my measurements slightly off when cutting the paper. But overall, I’m happy with how it turned out.

Oh and it would have been nice to make the pinwheel actually spin. But I decided to leave working out how to do that for another day.

Love,

Lady Joyful