Zigzag card

I've been the lucky recipient of some of Sarn's wonderful 'zigzag' cards in recent months and finally had a go at making one the other day - winging it slightly. By the way. the pinkish hue is from a glorious sunset when I took the photos in late afternoon natural light:

And a sideways peek, where you can possibly see the card folds a little better:

I used:

- 11.5" x 4" piece of white card stock

- scored across in one direction at 4", 8" and 9.75"

- folded the zigzag shape along the crease lines - using a Teflon bone folder to get sharp creases * see note below

- picked out a piece of patterned paper from Craft Consortium's Craft Paper from their 'Ink Drops' collection - called 'Ocean'. More about the papers below ** - they are luscious!

- cut a patterned piece for the main panel of the card measuring 3.75" x 3.75", plus one for the smaller front panel measuring 3.75" x 1.5"

- glued the patterned papers in place, using Collall All Purpose glue

- then die cut the sentiment using a snippet of Tonic Studios 'Craft Perfect' pearlescent card in 'Majestic Gold' and a Poppystamps 'Playful Hugs' die and glued it onto the front panel using a glue pen

- die cut the spray of leaves using another snippet of the same pearlescent gold card and a Memory Box die called 'Botanical Stem' (first spotted over at our Darnell's blog I think - such a lovely delicate die with embossed veins, I love it!) and glued it in place using a glue pen

I do have Yupo, a wide variety of acrylic colours as well as gold and silver metallic mediums to try and emulate some of the fabulous Yupo work done by Loll - but these papers called to me very loudly! I like quick and easy if I'm honest.

This card was fun to make and very quick - if you ignore the ditched card base that I totally ruined when I messed up the score lines. That situation is being resolved with a better large score board - more pennies.

* Used 300gsm white card for the base card and did have some serious issues making it fold with a sharp enough crease - even using the bone folder with threat and intent! My instinct is that 250 gsm weight, which I have loads of, would be more 'malleable', although for normal 'rigid' cards, 300gsm is my choice of weight normally. I made my card 4" square to fit in a bought envelope but you can vary the width as you wish. On hindsight I would possibly have made my final card with smaller measurements for the 'prop up' part of the card. But at that stage I was still guessing really - until Sarn kindly sent me a couple of sets of measurements for my next try!

* The papers used are made by 'Craft Consortium' and they are absolutely stunning! They're a UK brand, and they make loads of gorgeous papers - however, I think these are amongst their top ones, for now. The designs are based on the effect of alcohol inks on Yupo - with some 'faux' gold streaks. It's the faux gold (albeit not truly shiny so don't let the sales talk on websites fool you - I didn't and already knew what to expect) that really makes a lot of these double sided papers stand out from the crowd, I ended up buying three different pads - greedy little monkey! The papers come in pads of 6" square (and apparently even 12" square in some of the colours!). They will be great for 'camouflage sentiments' I can see.

The original idea was to still use shiny gold mirri card for the die cuts but in fact I realised that the Tonic pearlescent gold card is truly a more subtle and better look/match with the slightly muted faux gold streaks on the particular background paper I chose to use.

By the way, I just discovered that Top Topper Shop is a really good place to buy these papers in the UK and they do the papers in packs of just 10 sheets for £1.25 if you would like to have a play with a little selection of their packs but don't want to buy a full pad of 40 sheets! Clever idea. I ordered something else from them on Sunday and it was dispatched the following day.

I make no apology that I do overshare at times, which may help you if you spot something of interest to you. It's not a secret so why hide it? Also, this blog is still very much my own record for 'future reference and re-makes' as well. 

So happy to be able to share this in the current weekly Allsorts Challenge #664. I was so determined to join in with one of my favourite weekly challenges but haven't always managed (usually need a week to decide and a week to make!) The challenge theme is 'I love ....'. What a totally brilliant theme - and of course I love die cutting (my collection of dies is HUGE, yet there's always that additional new one that I NEED, sigh). Plus, I adore patterned papers. To be fair I have far too many. In my ongoing sort out in here, there will be a serious culling and dumping of old patterned A4 papers and many of the paper pads which only contain those 'meh' and rather dated looking papers that I bet we all have. Styles have changed so much and ...... it's a bit like updating your wardrobe! ☺

Am also nipping over to join in with Darnell's NBUS Challenge #35. Am so determined to use all my NBUS stuff, at least once in this lifetime, that I now first reach for the NBUS basket - before even beginning to seriously think about making a card!