Tags
Christmas, DIY, gift wrap, greeting card, iris fold, paper craft, upcycle
Card-making has always been a hobby, so I’ve made my share of greeting cards in the past. This year, I was looking for fresh ideas and creative designs to add to my card-making repertoire, and I finally found an idea worth investigating: iris folding. “Iris folding is a paper craft technique that involves folding strips of colored paper in such a way to form a spiraling design. The center of the design forms an iris — similar to the shape of the iris of a camera lens.” This definition is from Anne Hayward’s website, which also has a variety of tutorials and patterns for making different designs using iris folding. The pattern that I used can be found here.
Since I had lots of wrapping paper lying around, I thought that this would also be the perfect upcycling project- turning old wrapping paper into handcrafted cards! The design of this particular piece of wrapping paper was especially suitable for this craft- I was able to get 5 different patterns out of it! The iris folding process itself is fairly straightforward- the time consuming part was in cutting and taping all the paper strips down. The project took about one hour, and I am quite content with the results!
For the middle of the ornament, you can put a button, embellishment, or other decorations. However, I decided to draw a mini-version of a nativity scene. Jesus, after all, is the “reason for the season”, so He is at the heart of my ornament =)
Merry Christmas!
Betty
Soli Deo Gloria