I made this 15 months ago for a magazine's 'Papercrafter of the Year' competition. Entrants had two submit two items: one card (mine being the snowman never ending card), and another item not a card, demonstrating papercraft skills and design ability. Hmmm, that last requirement was my big problem! In the end I didn't win anything but wasn't bothered; I had produced two items I wouldn't otherwise have done, and both projects gave me enormous pleasure and satisfaction in their making and in handling them afterwards.
I decided to make a Fat Book sampler of papercraft techniques, tied together by an Autumn theme. The covers were made from mount board with a separate piece stamped and triple embossed with UTEE then applied to the centre of the front cover (Photo 1).
The pages are the standard fat book size of 4 inches square, cut from white card stock then sponged with distress inks in shades of brown, red, yellow and orange with touches of green. Photo 2 shows all the right hand pages with the following techniques: stitching; iris folding; mizuhiki knot; teabag folding; origami; magic card (details below); paper pricking; spirelli with moulded air dried clay leaves; exploding card (details below); 3D decoupage with lacé border. The inside covers were embossed with the Cuttlebug folder Pumpkin Harvest.
The reverse of each page (Photo 3) was decorated with rubber stamping and a quotation about autumn.
The 'magic card' (second row, third from left in photo 2) appears to be just an outline leaf stamp until the top tab is pulled and a coloured leaf magically appears (close up in Photo 4).
The exploding card in row 3, second from left, is shown unfolded in Photo 5. I used the extra space for a lovely little poem about October leaves and decorated it with an appropriate stamped border.
I love the colours of autumn!
