Have been making ang pow gems to adorn my door and one of my FB subscribers has requested for this tutorial!
I just learnt that some superstitious folks will be very unhappy if you have these up as Chinese New Year decoration... Not very sure the reason why, but I guess those sharp points are the main culprits! However, if your family and friends are not superstitious, go ahead (like me!) and make tons of these for your CNY decoration this year! If not, you can always wait until after the CNY period and make these precious out of other sorts of fancy paper!
I had originally used the triangle score guide tool by We R Memory Keepers to make my life easier since I already have their Trim and Score board. However, that doesn't mean you can't make one without the tools.
Materials that you need:
Note: All measurements are in inches, which will be denoted by "
- Base Template + Pattern Sheet Download (Please print the pdf at 100%, no scaling.)
- Ang Pows (The longer ones) / Thick papers or cardstock at least 6" x 6"
- Scissors
- Scoring tool (Optional but good to have, a plastic ruler will do the trick too!)
- Pencil / Pen
- Ruler
- Adhesive (I'm using a tape runner since it's faster)
- Washi tape / Masking tape (Optional but good to have)
These gems are all made up of the same basic module - equilateral triangles. So our objective here is to score/draw the base equilateral triangles repeats before tracing out the pattern for the gem you want to make.
For this tutorial, we will be making gems from a repeat of 1" big triangles. Once you get the idea, feel free to make different-sized gems by varying the triangle size. (As this template is catered for Ang Pow packets, the largest size you can go for the triangle is 1.5")
Okay, let's starting digging some gems and head on over to my tutorial!
For peeps hailing from GuideCentral,
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Cut your Ang Pow packet into a 6" x 6" square. Make sure to have the uncut long folded edge positioned at the center of the square.
The easiest way to do this with scissors is to draw a parallel line 3" away from one of the long edge and cut along that line. Then draw another parallel line 6" from the bottom of the Ang Pow, and cut along that line. It doesn't matter if your Ang Pow has a closure slit on it. Then, just cut along the bottom fold, and you'll have a 6" x 6" square with a center fold!
If you are using normal thick papers / cardstock, just trim them down to the right size.
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Just because we can! Cut out as many 6" x 6" squares as you need. :)
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Making sure the base template is the right side up (the numbers should not be upside down), place the ang pow square at the top left hand corner and align the center fold at the 3" mark. (refer to the photo above). If you are quite precise with your cutting, the corner of the ang pow square should fall nicely with the corner of the template.
At this point of time, if you have washi tape / masking tape on hand, I suggest taping the ang pow square down to the template with a couple small pieces of the tapes.
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Place your ruler along the vertical line at every inch, and score/draw a line. You should have 5 vertical lines.
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Align and orientate the ang pow square with the tilted square template as shown in the photo.
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Again, score at every 1" interval.
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You now have a nice repeat of diamonds. Orientate your piece of square such that you are looking at a series of fat diamonds (refer to photo). Place your ruler along the points of a column of diamonds (please refer to photo again), and score/draw.
Once you are done, you will be left with a piece of Ang Pow square filled with 1" big equilateral triangles!
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All you need to do now is to decide, from the pattern sheet, the gem you want to make and copy the pattern onto the Ang Pow square. Do make sure the orientation of the triangles on the Ang Pow square correspond to the orientation of the triangles in the pattern sheet first!
The example I have here will make an octahedron gem!
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Time to cut out your pattern~
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To make the next few steps easier, let's pre-fold all the scored/drawn lines.
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Apply adhesive on all the small tabs.
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The assembling part can get a bit confusing. But the rule of thumb here is to find out all the tabs that have an adjacent non-tab edge, and stick them together.
For example, in the case of my octahedron gem, there are 4 tabs that have an adjacent non-tab edge.
Once you have the first few tabs adhered, the gem should start taking shape and the rest should be pretty easy!
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And you're done! The bottom is a hexahedron made from a sheet of designer paper with a 1.5" triangle module. Have fun!
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In one of my earlier blog posts, a fellow crafter requested for a tutorial on folding techniques for shibori dyeing. That is currently in my pipeline, so do look out for that post!
2 comments :
So cute, but i'm not very goood with all this math stuff :-(
Agy, just try it! The only Math you need to do is making sure the spacing width is correct when you score/draw the lines. :)
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