washi .. pamshi birthday card

Have you had a chance to check out PJ Challenge yet?  My amazing friend Jo (Three Cs) has put together a great blog with the sole purpose to challenge creators and allow us to create using our cache which we collect (that's me using Jo's Three Cs in context (context is a "C" of a different kind - ack double parenthesis!): Collect, Cache and Create).  The prize is self-satisfaction and if you really want to push the envelope check out the New Technique Challenges where you can demo a technique that's "new to you".  You are encouraged to learn something new and then show off your nouveau mad skills in your own project or interpretation.

This birthday card, made for my mother-in-law, will count as one of my two PJ Challenge entries and I am also using it to demonstrate a new technique which I have now added to my ever-growing repertoire.

Washi is a style of paper first made in Japan and it translates to mean Japanese (wa) paper (shi).  For more information on washi link to the wiki page.  Here's my introduction to pamshi - paper created by me, Pam.

How to create your own washi tape in three easy steps for pennies a strip:

1.  Roll your double-sided tape onto tissue wrapping paper.  I like making loads of tape at one time and I love the slight imperfections in the strips as you line up the adhesive and attach it to the paper.  Both items, the tissue paper and double-sided tape, can be found at the dollar store of your choice.  You can play with types of paper (doesn't have to be tissue paper although it does give you that fun transparent style and if you check out my final product you can really see through the paper fringe which is fun) and you can play with the width of your tape.  I didn't want very many thin strips in this project but I did run two thinner strips of double-sided on the pale yellow tissue paper.

2. Rip the taped paper into strips.  And again, you have a choice depending on your style or the style of your project.  You can (a) rip the strips carefully and enjoy the rough edges, (b) cut the strips out to get more accurate and straight lines or (c) combine both techniques.  I, as you might have guessed, am a rip-and-fall-in-mad-love-with-the messy-rough-edges kind of girl but guess what friends - I ended up with (c) combining the two techniques.  Ripping was great for most colours of tissue paper but for some reason (maybe the fibers are more dense for different dyes or different manufacturers make certain colours) some of the colours didn't rip as easily.  To ensure that I didn't muck up the whole strip I ended up cutting some of them out.  You can wait to cut up your strips of washi after you have stamped your images onto the tissue paper, however, I like to capitalize on my paper and so I place the tape rather close to each other and because I didn't want the stamps to run into each other (or maybe I do in the future - that could be fun) I cut the strips out before stamping.  If you notice I left the two lines of thinner tape on one tissue strip and stamped the flowers onto both at the same time (fifth from the top in the image below).

3.  Stamp the tissue paper side of the strip.  Et voilà. Washi tape haute couture to match your project.  You may use whichever stamps you have in your arsenal, however, I found the ones that work really well are those that repeat in pattern or are small enough to repeat by hand.

Side note: enjoy the messy.  Imagine this:  tissue paper all over my work table and strips of double-sided tape sticky side up.  It didn't take long for one of those lightweights to accidentally get stuck onto my double-sided tape in a crazy random askew kind of way.  As I gently pulled the tissue from the tape, thinking I would just have to cut that section out I had a lightbulb moment: enjoy the messy.  I decided to rip up tiny pieces of tissue and randomly stuck them onto the double-sided tape.  Hence the two strips of messy pamshi which somehow reminds me of ballerina tutus. Seriously, this was the most fun I had in creating this project.  There will be more messy pamshi in the future!

The end product:

Prima Doll's backdrop was created with Tim Holtz's distress inks (tea dye, black soot) on watercolour paper.  The Prima Doll, herself, was stamped onto script cardstock paper from the Recollections: Tattered and Worn ginormous book of cardstock paper and her dress was made from scraps of various cardstock paper and leftover wrapping paper (see mr. everythingshetouches? there is sometimes a method to my madness in keeping random wrapping and packing materials which means there has to be a different better nicer word than hording).

The wings (Graphic 45 Steampunk Spells stamp set) were stamped onto the same script cardstock and highlighted with my Viva pearl pen.

The Happy Birthday tag was created from leftover watercolour paper from the main backdrop and distressed with black soot.  The brad is from Recollections collection and the little butterfly punch was a treasure found for $1.50 at Michaels.

 

I had been playing with the idea of this card for a few months.  I really wanted to highlight the washi tape and keep its integrity.  The front of the card is, therefore, a bit shorter than the back and the washi tape is a fringe along the length of the card.  I adore the transparency and delicate personality of each strip.  

PJ September Challenge #2 soon to follow: stay tuned my wonderful blogster friends.  And I greatly thank each one of you for the amazing words of encouragement.  You're all so very very sweet.