The Witch's Shoe

Happy Tuesday!!  I hope your week is off to a good start.  Mine seems to be going okay so far.  It is kind of boring but what excitement can you expect from laundry and housework?  I am so glad I have my craft room to retreat to and find some fun things to do.

When I was thinking about what I wanted to share with you today, my mind seemed to jump to Iris Folding. If you have never heard of this technique let me explain it to you.  It is a paper folding technique.  You begin by finding a pattern of something you want to create.  I have found a lot of mine online and printed them out to use.  Once you choose your pattern, you trace it onto a piece of card stock.  I use my light box when I do this and it is easier on light colored card stock.  Once it is traced, get out a cutting mat and your craft knife and cut out the image.  If you need this on a darker card stock, trace it onto a white first and cut it out.  Then you can use that as a pattern to trace around on the dark color.  All the patterns I have let me know how many different pieces of designer paper I will need to have.  It usually ranges between 2 to 5.  You want to try to get dsp that goes together so it will look really nice when you are finished.  Let me show you the card I made and we will go from there.

I used a base card of Gumball Green cut at 4 1/4" x 11", scored at 5 1/2".  I added a layer of Elegant Eggplant cut to be 4 1/8" x 5 3/8",  after I attached the shoe to it, using runner adhesive.  For the top layer, I used a piece of dsp I bought years ago from a craft store.  The dsp used for the Iris Fold was also bought as individual pieces from a local craft store.  Since the dsp is black on the front, I traced the pattern onto a piece of white card stock and cut it out with my craft knife.  I then laid it on the back of the dsp and traced it onto there.  I then cut that out.  This let the hole of the image and I could lay it over the pattern which shows how to place the paper.

Here is a little closer look at the shoe.  As you can see the dsp takes on a spiral look and I think it is pretty cool looking.  The center of the iris is always left blank.  I like to fill it in with something and this time I chose a pair of eyes to be looking out at us.  I thought this was really cute and would be memorable.  The dsp is cut into strips the size you need for each piece laid down.  The edge of each piece of dsp is folded to give that clean edge look.  Once you lay a piece down you secure it using a piece of tape - just regular tape that you use for everyday things.  The most difficult part of this is attaching it to the card itself.    I started by putting runner adhesive onto the Elegant Eggplant piece of card stock and then attached the shoe. But in my mind, this is not secure enough.  

That is why I used these cute little Halloween brads.  You can use brads or eyelets to secure the corners of the image to the card stock underneath.  I just like to know there is something holding the image securely.  I picked these brads up at a craft show several years ago.  They are brooms and I thought they would go nicely with the witch's shoe.  Once the brads were attached so the image was secured onto the eggplant card stock, I attached the eggplant to the green base card with the runner adhesive.  

If you like this technique, start searching for patterns online.  You will find there are many and the technique is fairly simple to do.  It's kind of fun too.

That's all for today.   Please come visit me tomorrow and see what I have to show you then.  Thanks for dropping by today.