Folding Trees

Tutorial Review: Lotus Blossom Card

Not sure which tutorial to try out next? The Folding Trees Tutorial Reviews are here to make your decision easier. For each review, we make a project based an online tutorial and report back on the difficulty, costs and time involved, plus any handy hints we developed along the way.

The template for the lovely lotus blossom pop-up card that we featured on Folding Trees last year went MIA, but I e-mailed the designer and now it’s back! I decided to celebrate by attempting one of these cards myself. Here’s my review of the process:

In progress

Cutting the template pieces:

Finished piece

The finished card, open:

And from the side:

Notes on this tutorial

The template comes on 2 pages. Unfortunately it’s designed for 11.7″ long paper, so for folks with letter-sized or A4 paper, the template is slightly too long and a couple of edges will be cut off. I didn’t realise this, so I had too draw the missing bits back onto my printouts by eye before cutting them out. You can avoid this by making sure “Shrink to Printable Area” is selected in Adobe Reader when you go to print.

I found it slightly annoying to have to cut everything out twice (once on printer paper to make the templates after printing, and then again on the coloured cardstock after tracing the templates), but you could save and reuse the printed paper templates, so you only have to do that step once. You could print directly onto your cardstock, but as each piece is cut from a different colour, you’d waste a lot of cardstock that way.

The card came together easily enough – the directions are very simple. The stamens were a bit fiddly to cut and to attach; I’d advise that you treat them gently so you don’t bend them.

The finished card is stunning and the pop-up effect works well. You could modify the idea with different coloured cardstock, or, if you’re feeling very creative, change the shape of the petals to make a different type of flower. If you haven’t checked out the tutorial yet, I recommend you take a look!

Level of difficulty

Time

Cost

low (recycle away)

Link

The original tutorial is available here.

Posted: July 13th, 2009 under Cards, Papercutting.
Comments: 5

Comments

Comment from Rachel
Time: July 13, 2009, 6:55 pm

It’s gorgeous! I’m so glad this card is back, thanks so much for the tips! I’ll be linking to this post.

Comment from Monika
Time: July 15, 2009, 1:04 am

Wow, what a wonderful idea! Thank you so much for the pictures and the link!

Comment from ning fathia
Time: July 17, 2009, 10:14 pm

Dear! Thank you for sharing this!! THIS IS TRULY AWESOME!!

Thanks!

Comment from Aleks
Time: February 8, 2010, 6:12 pm

Cool!
But one question…
Are you able to open and close the card?

Comment from June & Eve
Time: February 8, 2010, 6:44 pm

Aleks, yes, that’s what makes it a pop-up. The card folds flat and when you open it the lotus blossom pops out – it’s lovely!

Main menu:

Advertise with Folding Trees

Link to us:

Fine Print

Categories

Site search

Archives

FT on Facebook