Christmas Card Spheres
I make these every year at the end of the card season.
I have had people ask me about them so-here is a little postlet with some instructions:
You will need
- enough cards for 20 punches, some cards can get two 3 inch circles no problem. Smaller punches require much less!
- Binder clips or clothes pins to hold the glued edges together
- good glue like Sobo or this Tombo paper glue worked really well
- a scrap sheet of paper to make a template
- cardboard or stencil plastic
- a ruler
- a pen
The easiest thing to do is get a large punch in the size you would like to use. I have always made HUGE spheres with 3 inch circles, because you can still see most of the image.
But, smaller sizes work as well. I am going to make one with a 1 inch punch with left over scrap parts as an ornament this year!
This project requires 20 circles!
Once you have punched all the largest circles you need, don’t waste any of the card, punch smaller sizes, trust me making these spheres is a little addicting!
This next part can be a little tricky-creating the template for the triangle fold. Cut a scrap sheet of paper the same size as your circles (I used a magazine page).
Fold your new cut circle in half.
This is the hard part…you need to make two folds in the half circle creating a triangle with a round bottom. All sides have to be equal. (don’t make any sharp creases until you have this part worked out).
If done correctly these two folds create six equal pie creases!
Now it is time to draw the triangle.
Draw a straight line from two of the pie points. Then roate your circle and connect the 2nd and 3rd. Rotate again and connect the 3rd to the 1st.
It will look like this:
Because I used a super thin sheet of paper I usually glue it to a harder background piece, like stenciling plastic or cardboard and then cut it out so I have a rigid template.
Once you have that template, place it on the backside of your card circles and trace the shape. Be careful to make the points reach the edge of the circle, the crisper the edges the better your sphere will fit together.
Once you have drawn the triangles on all 20 circles, fold the edges up to create a shelf to glue.
Then it is just a matter of gluing your edges together creating the ball.
The easiest thing to do, until you get the hang of it is to make a top and bottom with 5 circles (like in the picture above) then slowly glue the remaining ten circles around the bottom edge of one of the spheres.
Here is a video that shows the whole process a little differently.
(I kinda like the way she scores her cards)
Molly J. McMahan 