Flying Iris Folds

Evenin' All.

It's nice to be back in Blogland after the Christmas break, hope you all had a lovely time.

We had another go at Iris Folding at club this month, using a lovely bird template from Papercraft Inspirations magazine. This is the version I did up as an example (it's similar to the one featured in the magazine, but they probably didn't spend an hour deciding which papers to use :D ).

 He's very Robin shaped isn't he? 

Let's try him in Christmas colours.

Very festive. 

Sorry, I know it's way too early to start thinking about it.

It's just that my Christmas stuff is still spread all over the spare bed. Ho hum.

Mr Robin then got me thinking about this month's Claritystamp Challenge. 

The theme for January is 'Things with Wings'.

So I had a trawl through my collection of Clarity stencils, and lo-and-behold 

I found the very lovely Filigraphy Butterfly stencil.

 I think this will lend itself very well to Iris Folding, so let's have a go...

First draw around the 'outy' bit with a pencil onto some white card.

 

Then use the top of the wings to draw in the body

and cut out the wings with a craft knife

(I kept the bits I cut out, they'll come in handy later)

Next I traced through the apertures onto copy paper

 and started putting in the pattern for the Iris Folding

I'll skip past the 'how to do the Iris Folding' explanation because

1. Other sites explain it much better, and

2. I forgot to take pictures during this bit

I'll just have a little segue into how I made the papers.
 

For the top half I stamped a couple of designs from the Claritystamp 'Journaling' set

onto white paper with Versamark ink and then heat-embossed with clear powder.

Then I brushed some pink Distress Inks over the top and rubbed the ink off the embossed parts with kitchen towel.

For the papers on the bottom half I decided to use the filigree part of the butterfly.

First I laid down a light base coat of Distress Ink with a blending tool.

then laid the stencil on top

 and dabbed the same colour ink through

Cut into strips and repeat this for each colour.

So.

Here we are with the 'Iris Folding' part just about done.

Hmmm. At this point it's seeming like a bad idea and I'm considering binning it.

But as the lovely Barbara says, keep going.

So I cover up my work with the 'outy' bit of the stencil and the wings I cut out earlier

then put the 'inny' bit of the stencil on top 

and dab some Frayed Burlap ink through for the body

It's looking a bit more like a butterfly now.

Let's add a border.

Cover up the butterfly with a 6" square piece of paper
(I made it tacky on the back by letting some Zig glue dry until it was repositionable).
Then use some masking tape around the edges, leaving a half inch border.

 

Lay the filigree part of the stencil over the border and start sponging through
 some more Distress Ink, blending one colour into the next as you go

Carefully remove the masking tape and the please-don't-be-too-sticky square of paper.

 Crop the white edges off, go around the inside of the border with a fine black pen

and then add a bit of detail to the body

Finish off with the Claritystamp Word Chains and stick to a 7"x7" card.

Blimey.
That turned out a lot better than I thought it would.

Wish me luck in the Claritystamp Challenge.

See you soon x