Fun with Origami
For some people, origami is associated with fancy restaurant leftover food wrapped in a swan-shaped piece of aluminum foil, or a football folded up to be flicked through hands strategically placed like goal-posts. Paper cranes gently strung from the ceiling... well, you get the idea. The point is that origami can easily be incorporated in to your card making projects, as I'm going to show you with this project.
For this particular card, we're going to create a cute origami shirt out of a piece of patterned paper.
Tools Needed for this project:
- Simple Card Base & Envelope
- Patterned paper
- Layering cardstock
- White cardstock
- Patterned paper cut to 6 inches by 2 5/8 inches
- Marker
- Black ink pad
- Sentiment stamp (This one is from Stampin' Up!)
- Adhesive
Step 1: Fold your piece of patterned paper long-ways/horizontally. This is going to give us a fold line to match the ends up to in a moment.
Note: The paper color or pattern you see on the outside right now is what you will see your shirt made of at the end. Choose wisely!
Step 2: Unfold your first crease, and fold in half again the other way.
Step 3: Once again, unfold the crease you just made. (I promise the next fold will stay.) Now, take one end of the paper and bring it up to the fold you just made.
Step 4: Remember the crease mark we made in step 1? We're going to now fold the top and bottom ends up to that horizontal fold.
Step 5: Now you're going to take the left side and gently fold the corners back out at an angle. This is going to become our shirt sleeves in a moment when we turn the paper around.
Tip: If, once you flip the paper over, you find that you are not happy with the angle of your shirt sleeves, feel free to turn it back over and play with the angles a little bit.
Step 6: Flip the paper over so the sleeves are facing down, and make a small fold at the bottom of the paper - maybe a quarter of an inch.
Step 7: Rotate the paper 180 degrees and fold the corners in to the center of the paper. This is going to become our shirt collar. Again, feel free to play around with the folds until you find an angle you are happy with.
Here's a closer look at the collar folds.
Step 8: Now take the bottom part of your paper and bring it all the way up to the top, sliding it just under your collar folds.
This is your completed origami shirt. Isn't that the coolest thing? Feel free to add buttons, pockets, pocket protectors and pens...if desired.
Step 9: Now we're going to make some layers to set the shirt on. Grab your white cardstock and a marker - we're making a faux border stamp.
Step 10: Using your marker, make dots on all four corners of the cardstock. Then make dots in the center of each side, then a dot inside each of those dots, and dots inside each of those dots. The idea is to create evenly spaced dots all over the edges of the cardstock.
If you mess up (like I did) just flip it over and start again.
Step 11: Now draw a line in between each of your dots. It's a subtle border, but something to add interest to an otherwise plain white piece of paper.
Step 12: Adhere the white cardstock to a piece of colored cardstock.
Step 13: Adhere your origami shirt to the white cardstock.
Step 14: Set those layers aside for a moment and adhere your larger piece of patterned paper to your card base.
If you'll notice, the pattern on this piece is the under-side of the pattern on my shirt. If I had accidentally folded the shirt with the stripes facing out, then I would have adhered this piece plaid-side up. Card-making is so flexible!
Step 15: Now adhere the shirt layers to your card base. Grab an ink pad and stamp and add a nice sentiment to your card.
And here's our finished card. I decided this one would make a nice Father's Day card. It could have just as easily been a Happy Birthday card. Or you could use a more feminine looking patterned paper and made it for a female. It's really quite an adaptable little pattern!
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