Pinwheel Card - In Development

PINWHEEL CARD

A Developing Project

This is really still an idea in development.  I woke up this morning, saw some gorgeous pinwheel pictures on Pinterest and decided "Heck yeah!  I'm doing a pinwheel card!"

I was bleary-eyed, cranky and determined but suffering a typical dose of early morning laziness- and I'm sticking to those excuses!

So yeah, if it has rough aspects or doesn't look quite right, that's because it's still an idea I'm trying to forcibly rip out of my brain!  Eventually I'll see if I can make it a proper working pinwheel but I suspect I'll need to find brads with longer stems for fastening.

 

 

Because this is for a card, I really needed to make a cute petite pinwheel.  So I figured out that, really, the biggest you want to work with is about a 5cm square.  Choose paper that has a nice pattern on one side and a bold contrasting colour on the other.

Also, from the same paper, punch out a little circle.  My little circle is 1cm in diameter.  It will be used to kind of tidy up the front (as you'll see below).

 

 

Fold your square in half, into a triangle, and then open it out and do the same in the other direction.  These folds form a guide.

Using a piercing tool and a foam mat (I use a cheap old-style mouse pad), make a small hole in the centre of the folds.  This will be where the pinwheel will be pinned together.

 

 

Now cut along the folds, about 3/4 of the way to the middle.  Pierce every second corner of the triangles, as shown.  Also pierce the centre of the small circle.

The block colour side is going to be the back of the pinwheel so I have pierced from that side to make it a little easier to poke the brad through in the following steps.

 

Stick your brad through the circle as it will be at the front of the pinwheel.  Remember when you're doing this, you're working from front to back.  The centre of the pinwheel is the LAST thing you put the brad through.

 

Now, turn your prepared pinwheel paper (try saying that 10 times as fast as you can!) over so the patterned side is up and start gently folding (but not creasing) each pierced corner over.  Gently push the brad through each premade hole.

This is kind of fiddly work because it is small scale.  Pinwheels this small probably need a nice flexible thin paper but it rips too easily so because I'm using thicker card, I have to deal with the "spring" of it.

So, I'm making use of a pair of clamping tweezers.  They are designed to hold on when you let go of them and open up when you squeeze them, so they're very handy for holding together the stuff you have already poked the brad through so you can focus your attention and fingers on getting the the brad through the rest and fastening it.

 

 

I decided to soften the look of the pinwheel by rounding off the corners.  I also trimmed off any bits sticking out from under the centre circle.

(And yes, the brad is different, I admit this is a "something I prepared earlier" pinwheel hehe - I actually like the white brad better, it looks softer and a smidgy bit bigger)

 

I'm attaching my pinwheel to the card with a 3-D Zot - for those not familiar, Zots are awesome and so handy!  You can do dimensional work without having foam dots that can be very obvious when you look from the side.

 

Put the pinwheel aside and prep the other parts of the card!

I am scalloping the edge of my card (which is about 8cm by 12cm when folded) with a Fiskars border punch.  This just adds a nice soft detail to the white card.

You can't see it in most of the pictures but it actually makes the front shorter than the back, which I quite like - just don't forget about it when you're filling out the inside of the card!

I have used the same card as the pinwheel to prepare my greeting.  I stamped my greeting on the block colour side and inked the edge in a similar colour.  I prepared a backing design piece that is the patterned side of the paper and inked its edges with the same colour.

As you will see below, the backing design of the greeting will be fixed  onto the card with regular double sided tape.  The greeting will go on top of that using zots or foam tape so that it stands out.

 

I have also punched out a postage stamp shape to sit behind the pinwheel to help it stand out more.  You could always just cut out a square and ink the edges of that if you don't have a stamp shaped punch.

The postage stamp will be stuck directly onto the card with regular double sided tape.  The pinwheel will be stuck to this using the Zot.

 

 

 

Assemble your card!  I added some little red pearls for something a little extra.  Done :)  I plan to find some exciting new papers with good contrast and colour to attempt this again.

If you make something like this or develop my idea further, I'd love to see what you do!  People can be so creatively different, it's amazing to see people take a starter idea and make it their own :)

 

Happy Pinwheeling!

Dani :)