WOYWW #199 ~ All About Baskets

Hi Every Body!

It's time for Julia Dunnit's What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday (WOYWW)!  Please click over and see Julia for the details and join in the fun!  (Julia, this is r.e.a.l.l.y. long, even for me, but I've sectioned it so folks can hop off along the way.)

 

Today my desk is folded in two.  I mean twofold.

 

First, I want to wish all of you a Happy Easter, or a Happy Passover, or a Happy Regular Ol' Sunday, doing whatever makes you happy!

 

Second, this week I continued messing around with some chevron die strips, so after the desk view, there is a chevron "basket weave" tutorial.  On my desk you can see a card with an eggy-headed bunny peeking over a 'chevron fence,' and a card with a 'chevron basket' full of sequined eggs. 

 

 

 I think I've got you all covered with my weekend wishes!

 

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If you need to make like an Easter bunny and hop along, I understand.  Thanks for stopping!  I hope you'll take a mo to wheel down to the comment section and let me know you came by so I can return the flavor!  Happy WOYWW and enjoy your day!  No, seriously, enjoy your day.  LITS*!

 

~~~

 

Chevron Basket Weave Tutorial

 

I posted this Easter card a couple of days ago and many peeps thought that I wove the chevrons in the basket, or that I otherwise put a lot of time and effort into making it, or  just plain wondered how I did it.
 

 

I've made some photo collages to show you what I did, since I don't have a video set-up in the Playhouse.  I don't have a video setup in the Playhouse because I know me.  I would sit there all day eMoting and not getting any cards made.  I weighed out whether I wanted 15 minutes of fame from a resulting viral YouTube video, or simple bliss puttering around making cards.  Making cards won so you will have to employ your own imagination to add action, drama, foreign subtittles, and musical orations!  Here you go:

 

 

Toilet paper?!  Oh, my, no.  The secret of making anything of this sort is to have largish sheets of sticky-backed paper.  You can use large shipping labels, or whole single sheets (lots of stamping websites have them), or fly-paper, or a 4.5 inch roll like I have here. 

 

My roll was purchased on accident.  I heard about these tapes from the "Online Card Class 2" that I took a few months ago and I placed an order with Ellen Hutson LLC.  I don't have excellent spatial and mathematical skills, as you know, and I thought I was getting an assortment of tape sizes, so when this big ol' hunkahunka sticky tape arrived, I went "What in the name of Sam Hill is this mahoosive roll of mahoosiveness?"  But, hey, my fault for doodling instead of paying attention during the measurements class in grade school.  This sucker will last me my lifetime and yours, but it was just the ticket when I wanted to mess around with my chevron strips!

I love how life always works out.

 

So you start with a piece of sticky paper and you make some cutout chevron strips with whatever die or skizzors process you use.

 

 

Then you just start laying your strips on the sticky piece.  I didn't pay attention to my color arrangement for this, so ignore that.  Unless you really like it, then you can comment, "Wow, I really like the color arrangement you used!" 

 

Next you just line up the mountain of one row with the valley of the other for as many rows as you want.

 

 

When you're done with your rows, you have to trim the sides and "finish off" the top and bottom of your faux weave.  For this tute, I just used a "mountain" snippet piece for both, which I then trimmed.

 

 

Now you have your completed "basket" or other shape you've made.  If you want to make a "fence," you just use a larger offset between the pieces.  Play around and have fun!  (Messing with them reminded me of the folded-over gum wrapper chains we made as kids.  Anyone?)

 

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What you'll notice next is that you can see and touch the adhesive in the small spaces left in the intersections of your design.  You could leave it like that and hope your cat doesn't decide to hop up on your desk and lay down on it, like I know a lot of your cats are wanton to do!

 

 

Or you could do what I did and use a small hole punch to punch out a few holes and use a pair of tweezers to pop them into the sticky bits.  This turned out to be a, "Well, wudja lookee there!" fantastic design feature.  When stuff like that happens, you pretend you meant for it to happen all along.

And that's it.  It doesn't take hours; in fact, it might be quicker than a card that needs a lot of coloring or fussy-cutting.  Let me know if you have any questions or if I wasn't clear. 

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Speaking of baskets, this is very last minute, but I just saw this incredible Easter basket made by my friend Vicky (emphasis: not made by me):

Isn't that so sweet?!  For easy-to-follow directions on how to make this basket, visit Vicky's site:  Crafting Clare's Paper Moments!

 

Mwah!

*Life Is Too Short!

(And thank you "cm!"  You made my day!!)