Weaving tutorial

As promised here is a tutorial explaining how I created the woven backgrounds for my cards. I have taken photos as I went along and I hope my explanations are clear. Unfortunately, once you have done something a few times you tend to make assumptions and forget to explain everything. I hope this isn't the case but you never know!

Anyway, here we go . . .
Start by cutting a piece of paper to size. I find it easiest to use a square and I usually make it a little bit smaller that the card I am going to make so that I can mount it. This is going to be the backing paper behind the weaving and you can determine how much will show by how closely together you do your weaving. I find it easiest to use a dotty paper as this helps me to position the weaving strips straight but you could use anything.

Use a contrasting paper (or 2) and cut your strips for weaving. I used 8 x 8 paper and cut strips about 1 cm in width but again you can vary this depending on your own design. You will need about 14 strips in total and I usually pick two different colours as I think this makes the woven effect more obvious but again this is personal preference.

Start by putting a small dot of glue at ONE END of one of the strips.

Position the strip on the backing paper, diagonally down the centre. I find it easiest to start in the top left hand corner. ONLY STICK DOWN ONE END OF EACH STRIP AT THIS POINT. This strip is going to be your guide for all the first layer of weaving strips so make sure it is in the correct position.

Continue adding strips at regular spacing along the top and down the left hand side of your backing paper.

Once you have finished this stage you should have something that looks like this. I have inserted the ruler to show that each of the strips is only attached at one end. You are now ready to start your weaving.

Using a contrasting weaving strip place it under the very first strip which you attached that runs directly down the centre of the backing paper.

Place a small amount of glue at each end of the strip following the line of the backing paper. Press the weaving strip down firmly and cut off any excess to use for the next strip. Make sure if you are cutting a strip off that you leave enough of the strip to over-run the edge of the backing paper. This strip is going to be your guide for all the strips in the second section of the weave so make sure it is in the correct position (that is, straight!)

Take the next weaving strip and thread it over and under the opposite strips to the first one. Place your glue at the edges of the backing paper and when you are happy with the position of this strip, press it into place.

Continue adding strips in this way until you are halfway across the backing paper. Now you will have reached the position where the original (in this example, red) strips are not secured at the end.

As you add the next and subsequent strips you will need to stick down the original strip as well as the strip you are weaving BUT ONLY STICK DOWN ONE (red) STRIP AT EACH END FOR EACH NEW (green) WEAVING STRIP THAT YOU ADD.

Continue adding strips in this way, remembering to stick down the original (red) strip as it is completed as well as the (green) strip that you are adding. Your completed weaving should look like the this. All that remains is to turn the whole page over and using the edge of the backing paper as a guide, trim off all the overlapping ends of the weaving strips and then you have it . . .

. . . a perfect woven background on which to build your project.

Here is a reminder of the completed project I made with this background . . .

You will see from my earlier blogs that I love this technique and have used it many times to create many different cards - although flowers and butterflies do feature in a lot of them! There are more examples in my Docrafts gallery at WWW.DOCRAFTS.COM where I am know as (surprise, surprise) kINGFISHER.

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and have found it easy to follow. It would be great to get some feedback.