Here's the tutorial on how to make the below 2 feet by 2 feet giant heart explosion card.
This card opens up into an even bigger 4 feet by 4 feet card...
A very good video tutorial on how to make a 6"x6" heart explosion card can be found here....the card is made out of one sheet of 12"x12" paper in
this tutorial, since it is not possible to get a 4'x4' sheet of paper (well not usually atleast :) ) I followed a slightly different approach..........so here goes my tutorial...
CAUTION: This is a picture heavy post.
You will need:
4 sheets of medium thickness chart paper (preferably black)
Patterned paper - I used about 20 sheets of 12"x12" patterned paper (I know that a lot!)
Cutting mat, paper cutter/craft knife, Glue (I used fevicol MR), scissors (ofcourse :P )
Distress ink (I used vintage photo)
Paper distresser
Shimmer sprays in shades of brown and gold
Sprayer/mister filled with water
Big Heart Template
To begin with I drew and cut out 4 hearts measuring approximately 2'x2' from the 4 sheets of black chart paper. Fold the chart paper in half along the longer edge and draw half a heart and cut the folded heart to get a symmetric heart - Pic 1
2 hearts like the one shown in picture 2, fold and press these in the center to get a good crease
and 1 heart with 2 extra flaps as shown in picture 3 and 1 heart with the extra flap on only one side (forgot to click a picture of this heart :( )
Lay the 4 hearts as shown in photo 4, with the hearts with flaps alternating with the hearts without flaps. Apply glue onto the flaps and stick to the hearts without flaps (one edge of one of the hearts will be open).
Fold along the white arrows on pic 5, and the base of your card is ready.
Now we have to cover it with patterned paper. Apply glue at the lower part of the front cover heart as shown in pic 7 and stick a 12"x12" of patterned paper on it, cover the remaining heart also with PP (pic 8), let the PP spill over the heart.
Once the PP is stuck properly, turn the heart over and place over a self healing cutting mat and cut off the extras with a paper cutter/craft knife (pic 9)
Open up the card and repeat the same steps for the 4 hearts on the inside, pics 10, 12.
Pic 11 shows the inside of the card entirely covered with PP.
As is visible from pic 13, the edges of the hearts do not look very neat, that's because I didn't do a very good job with the craft knife.......no worries, I'll just just go over all the edges with a paper distresser to get a nice worn out, vintage look (pic 14)
Now that our card is covered with PP on both sides we can have some fun with shimmer sprays. I used shimmer and antiquing sprays in shades of brown (pic 15)
Cover the entire card inside with the shimmer (pic 16)
Once you are satisfied with the shimmer coverage, take one heart at a time and spray plain water onto it, spray water till all the shimmer and antiquing inks start dissolving and mixing into each other, hold the heart up as shown in pic 17 to let the colors run into each other.
pic 18 shows the card after mixing all the colors with water, once dry distress the edges with Vintage Photo Distress ink (pic 19)
I didn't spray the outer side of the card with the shimmer sprays but just distressed the edges (pic 20)
Now my card is ready to be embellished.......
Remember to not embellish the folds on hearts 1 and 2 on pic 19 otherwise you will not be able to close the card shut.
and here's what the completed card looks like...
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Please feel free to write to me at juhi.handmade.cards@gmail.com for any queries, I would be happy to help.
Playing along:
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes
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