Paper ruching

This is kind of a fun technique and one I don't do terribly often. You see a lot of it in the vintage style and not much of anywhere else. I added some paper ruching to this fun and funky birthday card, and I liked the effect of the bright colors (Bermuda Bay, Old Olive and So Saffron) contrasting with the feminized touches of the ruching and the paper piercing in each scallop of the Sale A Bration border punch. 

Paper ruching is seriously simple to do. You run your long narrow strip of paper through the crimper about six times to break down the bonds of the paper and make it really easy to scrunch up. Then you start laying it down in pleats and little random folds along a line of Sticky Strip on your project. Burnish the whole thing down good with your bone folder when you're done, and it will stick 'til kingdom come. You can run ribbon down the center, or use an even thinner strip like I did, paper pierced and faux-white-gel-penned to look like stitched fabric. 

You can tell I'm at the bottom of a bottle of Crystal Effects, because it isn't totally clear over the words on the focal point piece. It gets a little cloudy at the very end. Luckily I made sure I ordered another bottle when I opened this last one, because I can't be without that stuff!

The stamp set, Birthday Bliss, is one you can also choose for a Sale A Bration reward out of the main catalog. All the papers come from the new Sweet Pea DSP stack in the Occasions Mini Catalog. Ok, am I the only one who always types "sweat pea" instead of "SWEET?" Oooo YUCK!! I am also constantly mis-typing the phrase "Big Shot" in a way that makes it very, very naughty. And you KNOW it's only a matter of time until I don't catch it once and it gets posted here for all the world to see…you can just count on it. I'll just apologize right now in advance.