Photo Tutorial: Curly Organza

11/26/2010

Photo Tutorial: Curly Organza

I happened upon a really fun thing the other day when I was dying some ribbon to go with my Concord Crush Christmas card. Apparently, the Whisper White Organza ribbon has enough synthetic fibers in it to cause it to curl up fantastically when the embossing heat tool is applied! Isn't that cool looking? It literally only took about thirty seconds to do a strip long enough for a card. Here's how I did it:

First, dye your ribbon whatever color you prefer. My favorite (and the simplest) method of dying ribbon is just to run a marker over it, and then and Aquapainter to spread the color out. No messy fingers, no little dye-pot to clean out. It takes about a minute and dries quite quickly. Of course, if you're in a hurry, you might grab your heat gun to help it dry--which is how I stumbled upon this fun technique!

And if you continue to use the heat gun on it, it curls even more! You'll just want to make sure you stop before it literally melts into a clump.

I was immediately struck with the potential for really cool holiday package bows done with this technique! So I had to make a quick tag (from the Tags 'Till Christmas bundle and the new Decorative Label punch) and try it out right away. Turned out pretty and unique!

Let me know if you need a spool of Organza and I will set you up--or, you can take advantage of the Black Friday specials going on through the 30th from Stampin' Up, by clicking on my shopping website here. I will definitely be using this easy technique on future projects! Sometimes I make the happiest accidents... if only half the boo-boos I made turned out this great, I'd be all set, right?!