Pleated Paper ornaments - Vintage Ephemera ! {Tutorial}
Beerhorst Family Art Show-- Pleated Paper ornaments
Originally uploaded by bbmarie.
In our recent Dumpster Diving Haul (past post) we scored lots of "vintage ephemera" {I love throwing around the word "ephemera" -- it is so poetic and rolls off the tongue so sweetly!} which is to say -- tons of old paper stuff. Old correspondence course paperwork, lots of pamphlets, sheet music and order forms from the 1930's....the perfect stuff for Pleated Paper ornaments! These are inspired from Matthew Mead's American Folk Art Museum line of Decor which you can see on line at Matthew Mead's website or in this monthes Country Home magazine.....These were very fun to make and not too hard. All I did was take 3 sheets of the same size paper(on a few I used 4 pieces, but I found 3 worked just as well) and fold them up paper-fan style (keeping the pleats approximately the same width) once a page is pleated -fold it in half like a V and glue the two middle edges together. Do this to all three pieces and when you have three V-like Fans - glue the 3 fans together into a circle - and put a button in the middle. When all the glue was dry -- I turned it over to the back and put some glue in the crease of a fold and slipped a loop of cord or string in the glue to form the hanger for the ornament. Let that dry and Wha-Laaa! Done!
I think they're very cool. I was inspired by that article too, but haven't done anything with it yet. You've made think I should take some time and look at it again.
Thanks!
Posted by: Mrs.Staggs | December 05, 2006 at 04:15 PM
so that's how... I was trying to figure that out. :o)
Posted by: captainwow | December 06, 2006 at 08:23 AM
I love how those look! Will have to make some too.
Posted by: Betsey | December 06, 2006 at 04:10 PM
I'll be making a couple of these out of the vintage music sheets I have. Thanks.
Posted by: Dana | December 08, 2006 at 06:39 AM
OHMY! I love your blog and now all I can think of is getting back to rughooking! And making folded paper ornaments, and stuff.
Posted by: Pam | December 09, 2006 at 06:16 PM
oh! they are very cool. i have lots of old love letters, from a love gone sour ... but, to make them into something new and pretty?! ... new hope for the hopeless ;)
they're grand!!!
Posted by: gray la gran | December 14, 2006 at 11:40 PM
Dumpster diving and ephemera are two of my fondest pursuits. It's great to see these paper treasures re-purposed.
Posted by: Marty Weil | January 10, 2007 at 03:17 PM