In my continuing quest to justify saving greeting cards as craft supplies I thought I would see if I could make a four strip heart from greeting cards.
In order to fit the strips on a greeting card I had to cut them smaller than the ones that I had seen. All of my strips are one inch wide. Two are 6 inches long and two are four inches long.
Because I wanted to use double sided tape or glue, not staples, to hold my ornaments together I scored a line 3/8 of an inch from one end of each strip.
On the front side (coloured side) of one of the long strips I covered about 1 and 1/2 inch of the unscored end with double sided tape. Then I folded my 9 inch hanging string and centred it on the double sided tape.
I placed the other long strip, front side down, on the strip with the glue and pressed the two strips together. .
I folded the scored ends of the long strips.
Experience told me that I should "condition" the shorter strips so that they would roll rather than fold when I bent them. To do this I gently rolled them onto an empty thread spool that was about 3/4 inch in diameter.
Then I folded the scored end and placed double sided tape on the other ends.
Next I stuck the two short strips to the longer strips.
I used more double sided tape to stick the scored end of the short strips to the other end.
Finally I used more double sided tape to stick the scored end of the long strips to the base of the heart.
Note. If I hadn't had any double sided tape I would have used a fast drying glue and at each step I would have pressed the glued sections together with clothes pins until the glue was dry.
Second Note. The card stock paper used for my second heart was a little thinner than the card stock in the first heart. I found that the shorter strips were less inclined to crease than for the first heart. I probably should have made the strips for the first heart (thicker card stock) a little longer.
When I laid out two of these ornaments like this I had another thought.
If I used a different coloured cards and added one or two more strips...
... I could make an ornament that looks like a Christmas tree.
So days later I gave it a try. Because the third loops would be too long to cut from greeting cards I decided to use corsage ribbon instead. And since I was no longer limited by the size of the cards I could make each of the three hearts from a single piece of ribbon. The ribbon is 1/4 inch wide and I cut three pieces. They are 8 inches, 12 inches and 16 inches long. I folded each one at its midpoint ...
... and tucked them inside each other so that the folds were together, the smallest one was on the inside and the largest one was on the outside.
Then I tucked the loose ends of the shortest then next longest then longest ribbons into the centre to make three hearts.
The ribbon was very springy so I applied glue to the inside surfaces and then held it together with a clothes pin until the glue was dry.
Then I glued two sequins to the outside and used a needle to thread my hanging thread through the sequins.
Then I tried it again but with some wider, and greener, grosgrain ribbon. This ribbon was much less springy and I was able to skip the glue. Instead I temporarily stuck some pins through the layers until I had sewed the buttons in place. (I wish I had a couple of slightly smaller white buttons.)
It was only when I had the two tree side by side that I notice that I had cut the longest green ribbon a little shorter than I had intended. It is only 14 inches long.
Pinwheel 2010
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