Operation Pancake - What A Waste?

Remember Operation Pancake?  This is my drive this year to make some flat cards that will qualify as standard (not large) letters.  The "waste" in my title refers to sequin waste, a most useful and green product that used to be thrown away.  After all, this is just what is left over when you have punched out all the sequins isn't it?  Yes, but look at what you can do with it...

You can make cards with it, like this one.  Here's how:

First off you need a sheet of white card 10"x7".  Score down the middle to make a card blank 5"x7" and cover with green paper.  Cut two right angled triangles of gold paper with equal sides of 3½" and stick down.  Thin strips of red paper have been laid along the top to cover the join and add interest.  It's cheaper than a peel off and looks nice and bright.

The glittery swirly background on the green paper was made with three colors (gold, green and red) of glitter glue swirled around and left to dry for a night.  I buy the big squeezy bottles of it from Anita's (DoCrafts) that come in eighteen colors.  This is the cheapest way to buy glitter glue, unless you know better.

Then you need this bell template, cut from a scrap of card: 

You now need some standard holed (usually about 5mm in the UK) sequin waste in red and gold.  I laid my bell onto the sequin waste and drew around it with a chinagraph pencil, but laying it underneath and making sure it does not move would also work.  You have to make sure that you end up with something made from only whole holes, which looks like this:

The purple line is the template, the green line is where you actually CUT.  Next, measure the hole diameter in your sequin waste.  Choose two papers that go with the gold/green/red theme and cut a few strips.  Here now is a weaving diagram, because these strips are not for quilling but for weaving in and out of the holes:

 This is a weaving diagram for the RED bell.  Here is the other one:

This one uses the GOLD sequin waste.  I hope you can see where you weave the papers, up one and down another in most cases.  When you get to the edge don't cut off the papers or they will fall out.  Instead, bend them over on the wrong side for about ½" and then cut.  Glue the bells down as shown using a suitable glue.

Here is the holly leaf template for the corner sprays.  The berries are red sequins, so you are not just using the waste.  Cut four green leaves and two gold ones, and use three sequins each corner.

Voila, you have a nice flat card.  It looks as though some time has been spent on it too so you ought to avoid the sort of comments you get if you have just stuck down a topper, added a bow and a greeting.  This usually runs something like "well, you can't have had much fun making this can you, why don't you buy some charity cards instead next time?"

I hate it when people say that!  Instead I buy other things from charities and make the cards...of course, you could always make these cards for charity as there is no copyright on them. Then you would have the best of both worlds!