Swinging “Whee” Card Tutorial for Whimsical Wednesdays

I started out not too inspired by this colour challenge. I am more into pastels, muted and jewel tone colours. With bright pink, pink, turquoise and grey-green, I was kind of stuck. I started with one of my new Pure Innocence girls from MFT and I found a pack of paper I had forgotten about with the required colours in it! No way, really? WAHOOO! Then I remembered a card by Jody Morrow where she had the girl actually swing back and forth on the front of the card. It was a fabulous tutorial but after I saw her card, I thought about it for ages, I was sure there must be a wee bit easier way to get the same effect.

As you can see, I DID IT!! Now my tree isn’t nearly as impressive as Jody’s which had many, many leafy punch outs to make her tree, with a trunk, she had a fence and grass… I decided to try going with a faster card and I’m glad because I am so pleased with it, my kids want me to make more! I am going to do  tutorial for you which also meant making another card so everyone is happy!

Step 1. Stamp the image on white CS. If you want to colour with a specific medium, make sure the paper matches your choice of colouring tools. Stamp the ropes part of the image again. Leave a circle of cardstock at the top of the ropes. (mine isn’t trimmed into a circle yet, see next photo)

Step 2. Cut out the image, DO NOT cut out the space between the ropes. Cut off the hands on the ropes-only image (I did the final trimming after this photo), cut off the tree tufts on the full image. Colour, paper piece or embellish as you wish. You will see in my photos I left that for later but only because this is a tutorial. You will need to overlay the ropes, gluing them together to make them longer. You could of course just use the length of rope attached to the image but you will only get a very short swinging distance that way. The photo shows approximately how much overlap you need.

Step 3. Choose your background paper, in my case, I used cloud paper from MME. You can add grass or other ‘landscaping’ as you wish but keep them near the bottom so they don’t interfere with the swinging action. Lay your girl over the background paper. It may need to be quite large, especially if you want grass or a fence etc., my cloud paper alone is 4.25x5.5”. I know a lot of this photo is fuzzy but that is because I focused on the brad.

Step 4. Referring to the photo in step 3, notice the brad I have chosen is quite flat-headed. It is a diamond shape but I photographed it from the side to show how thin it is. Sorry I couldn’t get in closer, I don’t have a macro lens for my good camera. Notice too that there are now holes punched in the papers. A small one, 1/16”, at the top of the ropes and a larger one, 3/16”, in the background paper. The larger hole must allow the brad prongs to swing freely, if you use a larger brad with larger prongs (this one has an 1/8” head and slightly smaller prongs) be sure to use a bigger hole if needed. Put the brad through the  holes attaching the girl to the front. Make sure you fasten the brad very loosely as seen in this photo but the prongs need to be flat. If needed, put a few layers of CS under each prong and press flat; the CS will prevent the prongs from tightening on the paper. See how loose it is from the front?

Step 5. Create your tree top. I just hand drew a tree top from CS. If you’d like the file, email me and I’ll send it to you. In the photo you can see the dud tree top I made. I thought I could make it more lifelike by cutting slits and lifting them up with foam dots to get some dimension but I hated it. So I cut another and the first one became a sponging template. First sponge all the entire tree top edges with a similar or slightly darker ink. Then placing your sponging template as shown, slightly askew, start sponging your ink. I just use a pouncing (straight up and down motion) with a bit of an angle away from the template. Continue sponging, moving the template back and slightly askew each time (so there aren’t perfect rows of leaves), until you are at the top of the tree.

Step 6. Now you need to add foam dots to the back of the background paper (clouds), one in each corner and one near the brad but not close enough to interfere. (Please ignore the white strip of CS near the brad, I goofed.) The tree also needs foam dots along the edges and I have carefully placed two as stoppers for the girl so she doesn’t swing off the edges of the card too much. It really doesn’t matter but as you can see, she has foam dots on the back of her too and those will catch as she swings off the edge and you have to fix her. Not as fun to play with. The foam dots on her are optional but I found that she swings better when the foam dots, WITH BACKING PAPER STILL ON!, because there is less friction against the background paper. I marked the placement of the ‘stopper’ foam dots buy placing the tree temporarily in its final location, swinging the girl as far as I wanted her marking the locations with a pencil. Then I added the foam dots to match. These pencil lines are ones I made to show you what I have done. The pencil lines you make will be on the front of the tree; mine were too small to photograph.

Missing from this photo are the C-3 and the clear Spica I used to colour the dots (nails) on the swing. I used E00 and E21 for the skin with E93 for the cheeks. E08 and E37 for her auburn hair (I always use more than one colour). Pink Spica for her shoes, W-5 and E71 for an aged wood look for the swing. And finally RV19 for the heart in her hair.

That is the action part. Now all you do is adhere your tree as in the final card photo and finish your card. A couple tips. If you will be giving this to a small child were it will receive some serious playtime, consider backing your girl with the white chipboard from the back of paper packs or gluing a toothpick to the back of the ropes. Adding a penny to the back of the image will make her really swing quickly but I think she is quick enough. If using a penny, definitely reinforce the ropes. Can’t find a flat-headed brad? Use a hammer to flatten a round-headed one or use double foam dots to lift up the tree higher to clear the brad. Whatever you do, DON’T MAIL without some serious protection to make sure the brad doesn’t flatten. I accidentally flattened mine while feeling where the brad was on my finished card to locate it to make my tutorial card. I accidentally squished it and had to slide my bone folder underneath to loosen it up, NOT EASY!

Thanks to mom Jessica for the colour challenge this week. I actually like it when a challenge is a TRUE challenge for me sometimes and this was a good week for it because I started early. I hope you will blurf to see what awesome creations the other DareDevils have in store. I am always even more excited to see what they do when I start off struggling to think of what I am going to do! As always, be sure to leave them all some great comments. They work so hard every week making a commitment to bring you such fabulous artwork! Come on, you gotta try it! Visit Whimsical Wednesdays to see the colours, tag your project with keyword DDSC23 if you want to upload to an online gallery and return to the WW blog with a DIRECT link so we can all see your take on the challenge!

Enjoy, Rebecca

RECIPE
Stamps: Whee Pure Innocence-MFT
Ink: memento black, Ancient page turquoise, celery-SU!
Paper: DP stripe, pink polka dot-SU! cloud DP-MME, white CS mat-SU!, white CS image-Taylored Expressions, sweet blush CS-PTI
Accessories: foam dots and circles-Jody Morrow, brad-SU!, ribbon-May Arts, flower eyelets-stash, ribbon tag trio die-Spellbinders