Tutorial: A Fan using the Dahlia fold

Today I want to show you how to make a fan embellishment for your paper projects that will lie flat.  Of course you can make an accordion folded fan, but it will not fare well once you stuff it in an envelope.  This fan is deeply dimensional, but flattens nicely.

The two main things you will need are double-sided paper and circle punches.  The radius of your fan will be the diameter of the circles you will need to cut.  For example, if you want a fan that is two inches wide, you will need a one inch circle punch.  If you don't have double-sided paper, then color the back by brayering or burnishing with a dye ink.

If your paper has a repeating motif, try to punch your circles so that they are identical.  

This paper doesn't have a repeating motif, so I tried to simply make sure they looked as similar as possible on the top edge.

Crease each circle into quarters by first folding it in half vertically, opening it back up, then folding it in half horizontally, then opening it again.  This is the back of my demonstration piece.   I cannot stress this enough - keep track of the top of your circle!  Double-check before you fold!

With the back side facing up, fold the curves towards the center, using the bottom and side creases as guidelines.  Because the back side is up, it is very easy to accidentally fold the wrong edges.  Double-check before you fold!

To complete the "petal", flip it over so the right side is up.  fold the two folded edges from the previous step to the center crease.  It looks a little open in this photo because I'm not pressing it down, but the two edges do meet in the middle.

Put an arc of glue on your base.  I like tacky glue for this because I can slide the petals around to adjust them.  This base is an ATC, and the circles I am using here are 1 1/4 inches.

Here is the completed card.  After I glued the petals in a fan shape, I put a doodad in the middle.  This particular doodad is a gold charm, and it already had a hole for a ribbon.   I like putting ribbons on my fans, a consequence of too many years at the ren faire.

You can go to any size.  You can see by the grid underneath that the circles are only slightly over a half inch in diameter.  Note also that I carefully punched the paper to give me identical circles, and lined them up so that the white flower is at the top.

It's an inchie!  a fancy brad is enough for a hinge.

Stripes are great for these fans, but one again, be careful how you line them up!  they will look good either horizontal or vertical, but terrible if you mix them up or don't pay attention.

This is a standard size card.  I used 2 inch circles, and to make the handle, I first punched a small flower out of gold cardstock, then punched a hole for the ribbon.  I wrapped the ribbon in gold wire to make a handle.  See how dramatic the stripes are?

I hope you will give this a try.  I would love to see your results!

 UPDATE:

Diane in Idaho sent me a photo of her fan.  She says that this is a work in progress, but doesn't this fan work perfectly with the image?  The heart brad at the hinge is terrific, too!  Then she made this one, using half-inch circles:

Jeannie has a great dahlia fold fan on her blog - you can see how great it looks when the papers in the fan are echoed in the layers on the card.  She also made a medallion using scalloped circles.

Becky Partan of My Paper Moon Stamps put made a card using the same paper in the background, the fan, and paperpieced as the kimono on her image .  She left the back white, and the contrast really pops!

Vicky did an awesome job using this fan in her vintage themed shadowbox. Not only geishas hold fans!

Tutorial: How to make a Japanese bookmark doll

Bookmark dolls, or shiori ningyo, are a fun Japanese craft all by themselves, and they also make a cute embellishment on a card or other paper project.  Despite the name, they aren't usually used as bookmarks; they are called that because of the shape.  They are really more of a paper doll.  Although they are traditionally made out of washi paper,  almost any paper can be used if it isn't too heavy to fold.

You can make one any size, but my goal here is to make one that could fit on a standard card.  I started with a plain piece of white cardstock, about 4 inches long and about a half inch wide.  Using scissors, trim away a slender neck and shoulders.  The neck looks long now, but most of it will be hidden under the head.

Next, prepare a small piece of paper to be the undergarment - kimonos are not worn directly against the skin.  I used a 2 x 3 inch piece of leftover origami paper.

Fold over the long edge a quarter of an inch, then fold it over again, to make a nice clean border to your paper.  If your paper isn't colored on the back side, you can unfold it at this point to color the part that will show, then fold it back up again.

Once you have it colored the way you like, you can wrap it around the neck of your base as shown in the picture.  Use a bit of adhesive to hold it in place.  Be very particular about folding the right side over the left as shown - only the dead wear it the other way.  Once you have the neck stable, fold the sides so they are parallel to the sides of the base.

 Pick a a paper to be your kimono.  Although most people wrap the kimono all in one piece, I find it easier and less bulky to wrap the top and bottom separately.  No one will see once you put the obi (sash) on.  For this size doll, I cut a 2x4 piece for the top and a 4x4 piece for the bottom of the kimono.

Fold over one edge and color the small piece just like you did for the undergarment.  Wrap it around the neck, letting the undergarment show at the neckline.  Again, be careful about having the right side over the left.

Fold the sides back to be parallel to the sides of the base.  If you are making a freestanding doll (not glued to a background piece) tuck the excess paper inside the fold instead of pushing it to the back.  Use a little adhesive to hold the top in place.

For the bottom of the kimono, fold and color one side of the square of paper, just like you did on the first two pieces.

Wrap it around the base, lining up the colored border.  Use a little adhesive under the flap to hold it to the base.  You can flare the bottom a tiny bit, if you like.

Now it is time to add the obi.  Actually, you can have several obis, three is a very common number.   Use a strip of a differently patterned paper, about 2x3 inches wide, and fold in the long edges to make them smooth.  Here I have two.  A little dab of adhesive under each one holds it steady while you wrap the ends to the back.  If you are gluing it to a background, then you are pretty much done with the outfit.  However, if you are making a freestanding doll, you will want a bow in back.

Here is a back view of my doll.  There are a lot of different ways to knot an obi; this is my paper interpretation of the popular drum bow (smashed flat).  I took another couple of inches of the same paper that I used to make the obi, and tucked the ends in over and under the obi.  Be careful to hide your cut ends under the bow.  In this photo I hadn't added the second obi yet.

Now it is time to make the head.  For the head,  I punched a circle out of white cardboard with a one inch circle punch.  I then cut out some hair from black cardstock, making sure that the hair was larger than the head.  You can be creative with your hairdo - hair can be long or short, fancy or plain, pigtails, buns - your imagination is the limit.  Also cut out some bangs or other hair to surround the face area.  These dolls don't have faces, so don't worry about the hair covering the eyes.

Here is my completed doll, with the head glued in place, and a few flowers added for fun.  I also have a different doll I made earlier in this picture, just to show you a different hair style.  Here they are from the back:

You can see I tried a different bow style on the second doll.  If you do a search for obi knots, you will see a lot of different variations to try.

These dolls ended up being about 6 inches long, but if I wanted to fit them on a card, it would be easy enough to trim a little off the bottom.  You may wonder about the lack of sleeves.  Bookmark dolls traditionally don't have sleeves.  However, it is your doll. You can try to add sleeves if you want, but trust me - it will not improve the look of your doll, unless you want your doll to look like Batman.

(snickering - I kill me)

The obijime (thin tie over the obi) is a very thin strip of yellow cardstock.  What Japanese girl doesn't have a headband with kitty ears?  Anyway, as you can see here, if you make the doll out of scrapbook paper, it will be sturdy enough to stand up.  the wings...er...sleeves are two separate pieces of 3 x 6 inch paper folded in half cut with a curve.  

I hope you will give this a try - it is fun,  and a great project to do with the kids, too.

Chinese clothing tutorial

Happy Chinese New Year!  for you today I have a tutorial on how to create a traditional Han Dynasty woman's outfit on a paper project. This tutorial was requested after seeing my Year of the Rabbit ATC.

The project assumes that you have a stamp for a head, but you want to present a full body.  There are a gazillion stamps featuring the heads of women in a classic oriental style; the one I am using is by CS Designs.  I like that it is in a traditional pose, but the line work is clean and modern.

Here are all the things I used.  The stamp is Framed Geisha 2 - it's a collage stamp, but I only wanted the head.   To get the head to print at about 1 inch high, I needed to print the collage image at 2 inches square.  Isn't it great how you can resize digis?  Note:  If your head is a different size, you will have to adjust the measurements given here accordingly.(duh!)  You can always use my Asian head freebie, if you want to make hair yourself.

  Here I have prepared the head for use.  I used Sharpie to blacken the things that weren't already black, and Wite-Out to remove things that I didn't want (if you are wondering why I didn't do that all digitally, all I can say is that it isn't always possible, and sometimes, even if you do change an image digitally, there is no guarantee that you won't have stray marks anyway.  This is a tutorial, I've taught you how to fix things manually)

Here are the pieces that I used for the outfit cut out.  The top needs a 4 by 8 inch piece of paper total.  Cut it into two 4 inch squares; cut one square diagonally into 2 triangles, and the other laterally into 2 rectangles.  I used a 3 by 4 inch piece of paper for the underskirt (here it is already crimped, so it looks thinner), and a 2 inch punched circle for the overskirt.

Notice that I have that cheap lousy double-sided tape that you can buy at the Dollar Tree.  It has terrible adhesion, but for my purpose, to temporarily hold things in place to check for size and position, it is fine.  I will use tacky glue to hold everything together at the end.

Let's start with the top. Using the triangles, fold over the diagonal edge twice, about a quarter inch, and crease well.  Open it up and color it a nice coordinating color on the part that will show.  Do this to both pieces, then fold them up again.  The colored edge represents the binding at the neckline.

Now I wrapped the first triangle onto the body.  Fold down the top corner about a third of the way, keeping the colored edge aligned with itself.  That forms the shoulder(image on left).  Then take the left side and tuck it under.  If you flip it over, it will look like the image on the right.

The other side is done the same way.  Trim off the little bits sticking out with scissors.

The sleeves are done in much the same way as the front; roll the small edge of the two rectangles  up twice a quarter of an inch, open them, color the part that will show, then roll them up again.  Fold in the sides, and squish the shoulder cap down into a rounded shape.  The pictures above show how it looks front and back.

Here is how the sleeves will be placed.  I love the traditional pose where the body is facing one direction but the face is facing the other!  Here I noticed that one sleeve is longer than the other - to fix it, I just crunched the shoulder down a little more until the two sides matched.  If you want a bent elbow, just bend the sleeve, keeping the crease to the inside.  I didn't have to make hands, as it was traditional to have the sleeves so long that the hands would be covered.  The Chinese love gigantic sleeves!

The underskirt is traditionally pleated.  I folded up the hem and ran it through my crimper to get that effect, then folded the sides under a bit for shaping - this is how it looks from the back.

The overskirt is made from two quarters of a circle.  I used a metallic accent pen to edge this part.  I folded a curved shape to the hips here - the photos show the front and back views of these pieces.  The edging is a little smudged, because I was too impatient to let it dry before handling it.

Here is the arrangement of the skirt pieces on the body.  I moved the sleeves you you could get a good view.  Now is when you can adjust the width and length of the skirt and sleeves as needed.  I would recommend gluing these parts together before attaching the sleeves.  A thin sash around the waist completes the body.  I used thin ribbon. 

Here is the complete outfit.  I decided against visible shoes because of the whole bound feet issue; I think it looks fine without them.  The background panel is 3.75 by 8.25 inches, perfectly sized to layer on a long card.  I ended up cutting the bun from the hair, layering it underneath, and wedging the punched flowers between the layers. 

If you end up using this tutorial, let me know!  I would love to see your work.

Crochet Shamrock

Did you like my little crocheted shamrock? Here is the pattern I created. Of course, you have to know how to crochet and how to read crochet patterns. If you can't, this should not be your beginning project. I used embroidery floss instead of yarn to make this small enough for an ATC. Using yarn and a bigger hook will produce a bigger shamrock.

Crochet Shamrock

row 1: 5 sc in a magic circle. Sl st in first sc to close the circle. Ch 1.

row 2: In one st, (sc, dc, 2 tr, dc, 2 tr, dc, sc) this is one leaf. Repeat in the next 2 st.

stem: In the last st, sl st, ch 5, turn; sl st in each ch until you are back at the center. Weave in the ends.

It’s just that simple! If you make this, leave me a comment and a link so I can see it!