Pinwheel Embellishments

And here we are, finally, the pinwheel embellishments. These are really easy to make and look quite fancy on the front of your cards and other creations. You will find that after you making a few you can knock out a whole bunch of them very quickly and keep them for future projects.

Finished pinwheels, unattached.

Materials

·         Two pieces of coordinating patterned paper (approximately  3" x 3" of each design)

·         Plain cardstock to match your paper (approximately 3" x 6")

Equipment

·         Paper Trimmer 

·         Adhesive

·         Grid Paper 

Instructions

1.     Cut your patterned paper. You need 4 pieces of each design cut to 1¼" square (8 squares in all).

2.     Cut two pieces of plain cardstock 2⅝" square.

3.     Use the Grid Paper to place one plain cardstock square as a diamond, lining up the points with the bold lines. Apply a small square of adhesive in the centre of the second piece and position it squarely on the diamond, creating an 8-point star. Make sure your adhesive doesn't go to the edges or your pinwheel will stick to the Grid Paper. If you plan on making a few pinwheels, you might want to make some pencil marks around the corners of the top square (on the grid paper) so that it's easier to line them up.

4.     Take one of the small paper squares and place a small piece of adhesive on the back. Position it onto one point of the star, leaving a small border. Then place a square of the other patterned paper onto the next point, overlapping the first piece.

5.     Continue alternating squares until you reach the last piece. This piece will need to be placed partially under the first piece to complete the pattern. You will have to lift the first up to get the last one in place (that's why you only want a small amount of adhesive on this one). You can go back and add more adhesive  to all of the squares if you want but it probably isn't necessary.

6.     Finish off with a brad, button, bling or whatever in the centre of the pinwheel, then place it on your card or gift box. You could even stamp a sentiment onto a small label and place it in the middle of the pinwheel.

Examples

You can just place  the pinwheel onto the front of the card with some coordinating DSP in the background

Add some ribbon for contrast

Add a sentiment on a label

Stamp directly onto the cardstock

      As I've mentioned previously, I made some of these to place on the front of the Small Gift Boxes (see last week's blog). The boxes are only 3" x 3", so I had to make the pinwheels a little smaller. To do this, I made the squares 1" x 1", and the backing cardstock pieces were 2⅛" square. You can basically make them any size you want! Just choose the size of your squares, then double the squares' measurement and add ⅛" for the backing cardstock.

      Here are some of the smaller ones on the gift boxes.

You can position the pinwheels so that the points are straight up and down, as on the two on the right, or turn them just a little as on the two on the left.

So, I hope you think that these were worth waiting for! Until next time, happy crafting.