I love spending a few minutes every day searching Pinterest for unique design ideas. Lately, I've noticed a trend: ruffles! I've found them adorning shirts, aprons, pillows, and curtains, and I love the look! I have added folded ruffles to my layouts, but they don't look quite like fabric due to the fact they are made out of, well paper. However after seeing all the fun possibilities lately, I decided to try if I could make my paper ruffles look more like the fabric ruffles I'm seeing all over the place.
Enter water. Today's project is something you can easily add to a layout, a card, or an altered item. It's a straight forward technique using water and your sewing machine. Do not be afraid, water and paper do mix in this case.
1. Cut some 1.25" strips of paper, then run one under water for a few seconds. The strip should be wet, but not sopping.
2. Use a scrap strip of paper as backing, then ruffle fold the wet strip and start sewing it to the scrap. Stitch for a few stitches, stop, scrunch again, repeat until you have the length of ruffle you'd like. I made mine 8.5" long to frame my photo. I ended up using two and a half strips to make this size of ruffle. Because the paper is wet, it can tear easily. Be gentle as you are working with it. If it tears, it's not the end of the world, just start ruffling over the torn spot, it's very forgiving.
3. Let the strip dry, this takes a few hours. While still wet, you can play with the look of the ruffle, making it stick up on the edges, after it dries, it retains the wet shape really nicely.
That's it. Very easy to add a trendy look to your next project. I used the 100 Days of Summer line, but this technique would work with any of the papers from Simple Stories.
Supply list:
Simple Stories:
100 Days of Summer Line (Sweet Memories and Simple Pleasures patterned papers, 12x12 Fundamentals Cardstock Stickers, 12x12 Expressions Cardstock Stickers )
this is too cool miss em. must try!
Posted by: Lisa Dickinson | May 27, 2011 at 05:21 AM
Very cool idea Emily!
Posted by: Beth Ann | May 27, 2011 at 05:23 AM
Beautiful! Love that you used just the one piece of patterned paper for everything, gave it a very cool look!
Posted by: Ally | May 27, 2011 at 06:35 AM
Love it Emily!! Darling...and love the look of the one patterned paper :)
Thanks for sharing,
Amber :)
Posted by: Amber | May 27, 2011 at 06:55 AM
Thanks for a great idea. I love it!
Posted by: Colleen Brown | May 27, 2011 at 08:54 AM
I love the pillow! I've been thinking about trying to make a pillow out of an old tee shirt. Ruffles might be the way to go!
Posted by: AFeistyRedhead | May 27, 2011 at 08:58 AM
Keep functioning ,impressive job!
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