Mexican inspiration card

For the second inspiration challenge we were to create something inspired by Mexico. While browsing Mexican art forms, I came across something called papel picado, or "perforated paper." Sounds quite papercrafty to me! They take stacks of tissue paper and cut shapes out using awls and chisels. These designs are then strung up side-by-side, banner style, during celebrations.

Being me, I started out by searching for a pattern that I could use for my card. I couldn't find anything that would work, so I played around and came up with a design that looks pretty cool! Can I just tell you how proud I am that I "freehanded" this one? I cut a rectangle of tissue paper and folded it in half, bringing the two short ends together. Then I folded it in half the other direction, so I had it folded in quarters. Keeping the center of the original rectangle as my point, I folded the piece on a diagonal to form a triangle, and then folded that triangle in half again. Once I had the piece folded I used my paper punches to cut pieces out of the folded edges. I also used my Cropadile to punch a few holes in the center of the piece. When I unfolded it, I was left with a radially symmetrical design. I accordian folded the piece longways and then used my corner rounder on the corners, creating a scalloped bottom to the piece.

I used Glue Dots vellum adhesive (my favorite vellum adhesive ever!) to adhere the tissue paper to a rectangle of cardstock; it gave a nice, even bond for all of the delicate sections without leaving any trace of adhesive. The sentiment tag was created by putting each end of a small strip of paper into my large corner punch. I like the softly rounded edge that resulted.

Papertrey Ink cardstock and stamp--Mega Mixed Messages; Versafine by Tsukineko stamping ink; EK Success punches; Martha Stewart loop border punch; Cropadile; Glue Dots vellum adhesive; jute; tissue paper