Paper art is a lot of fun. It looks so good when you have finished a neat little project and people think you are so clever - little do they know that it can be a very simple and cost effective matter to make 3-d paper craft and other off the page projects.
Often a completed project only needs a person to take a basic shape and make lots of them from scrap paper. You may like to make a special paper art item to decorate your home or to serve as a decoration for a special event.
For example, I made a topiary tree with circle shapes. Here's what I did:
- Step 1. First I decided on a color palette for my tree. I had a lot of blue and green scraps of card stock and designer paper in a folder as I can never make myself throw paper scraps away, and surprise surprise - those color hues also went nicely with my home decor. You could of course choose any other color combination that suited your decor or party theme. (I have always thought what pretty wedding table decorations these trees could make if they were done in pink (or other wedding color) and silver with a bit of lace or netting used as the first layer of the leaf motif, for example. You could even use a different shape for the leaf motif such as a star or hearts).
- Step 2: I took a Styrofoam ball and a narrow wooden dowel and made the basic frame for the tree. The ball would form the leafy part of the tree and the dowel would form the trunk. I wrapped the wooden doweling in some green paper to make it look more finished. Just lay the doweling down on a piece of paper the same length and roll it up, then adhere the edge down.
- Step 3. I pushed the dowel into an ordinary flower pot filled with small rocks and covered the pot with paper and punched circle shapes. I made sure the dowel was straight and more or less in the middle of my flower pot.
- Step 4: Then I punched out many circles of paper to make the leaf motifs for the tree.
- Step 5: To make my leaf motifs, I used two sizes of punched circles with the larger circle as the first layer, then the smaller circle placed on top, and I punched a smaller flower shape to go on top of that. I ran a pearl-headed straight pin through the three stacked shapes and pushed it straight into the Styrofoam ball. I did this over and over until I had covered the entire ball with my overlapping leaves. I wanted to make sure none of the Styrofoam was showing. If you wanted to paint the ball first this may not be such a concern for you.
- Step 6: I did leave a small gap of Styrofoam uncovered so I could push the dowel into the ball once it was prettily covered in colored paper shapes and pearl-headed pins.
Now don't you think the paper tree could be finished off beautifully with some paper butterflies? I made two paper butterflies and wrapped them around the stem of my tree with florist's wire, but you could make some to sit on the ball of the tree as well if you liked.
Here's what I did, step by step:
- Step 1: I used two heart punched paper shapes to make the wings for my butterflies
- Step 2: I cut out a cigar shaped body (cut two cigar shapes and sandwich the florist's wire and the wings between them with some adhesive).
- Step 3: I decorated both sides of the wings with smaller punched hearts and added some details such as eyes and wing veins with a silver gel pen.
No comments:
Post a Comment