Fringed Tree Tutorial

Happy Wedneday!

OK - I get a day to breathe … well, half a day really … have to make more little pumpkin treats for a customer today, need to design 5 cards for a fundraiser tomorrow and need to design 5 more on Friday for my upcoming Stamp-a-Stack … oh, and maybe I should make Alicia that birthday card!  Oh!  That reminds me - SHE needs to make Thank You cards for all the gifts she got … then my brother and SIL are in town for Thanksgiving … then ahhhhh - never mind - no days off.  Oh well - I'd just be bored anyway, right??  At least I get to go see my pal Elaine today to get my hair coloured and trimmed.  Nothing like a new "do" to perk a gal up!

So I thought I share a quick little picture tutorial today on how to make the KEY-UTEST little Christmas tree!  Here it is:

The picture doesn't really do it justice … you just have to touch it in really life!  I was thrilled last week when Katie Adams from the Utah Home Office was in town for our stamping Team Meeting and took a shine to my tree - she even took pictures of it :)

It looks like it only took 20 minutes to put together … and really that's all it SHOULD have taken - alas - I didn't have enough of the Fancy Silver Vellum I needed so it actually took me over 2 HOURS to put together *lol*  Here is what I did.  I took my 3 sheets of vellum (but you REALLY need 6 sheets!) ...

Cut them to 10" x 11" then folded them each in half …  the 10" side is on the bottom - the 11" is height.

I then cut them from tip to tip ...

The great thing about these dimensions was that although I didn't have enough of the vellum I needed, by cutting them this way I ended up with extra pieces that were exactly the right size … just halved … so I ended up with 3 pieces like this ...

… and 6 pieces that were half the needed size … if you adhere those 6 pieces together you get a total of  6 full triangle pieces.  THAT's where things started getting messy … and time consuming!

I started by using glue dots to attach the three full pieces together on their fold lines - like this:

Yes, it was tedious and time consuming … but with vdlm you need to be carefully how you adhere ices together so you don't see the adhesive!  If I were to do it again I would have scored the pieces close to the middle fold line and taped them together.  Live and learn!

This is how it looked once the 3 full piece were stuck together on their fold lines:

At this point I apparently stopped taking pictures *lol*.

I took my handy dandy hot glue gun and ran a bead of glue down the centre point and stuck in those extra half-sheets I had.  Yes - painful on many different levels!  It would have been WAY easier if I had 6 pieces of the darned vellum paper!

nce all of the pieces were in place I grabbed my fringe scissors and cut on an angle to get the tree fringes.  Sounds easy, right?  Ya no.  A long, tedious, painful process as the scissors weren't deep enough to cut the fringe as deep as I wanted to … so that meant trying to manoeuvre the vellum in such a way that i could continue cutting … without cutting OFF the thin little vellum strips.  NOT an easy task.  If you tried this you would understand what I mean … but I was determined and I DID manage to do it.  I'll never do it again, THAT is for sure *lol*

I love the final result but would definitely do things differently next time.  1) buy more vellum and use 6 full sheets.  2) score near the middle fold line to attach the pieces together more easily and securely 3) don't try to cut so deeply with the scissors -  a little fringe is fine - NOT worth the extra time, effort and sore fingers from trying to go right to the middle fold line.

So there you have it - at long last - my fringe Christmas Tree.  This would be cute in any DSP but I really like the soft, romantic look of the frosted vellum.  Give it a try and let me know how you get on!

I have about 10 projects I need to post so keep popping back in.  I can't promise WHEN I'll get them done but chances are I'll need to procrastinate on that long list of things I need to do so I'm sure it won't be TOO long *lol*.  Until then - have a stampy day!


Tam