Finished Coloring Pages: Simple Paper Cutting and Weaving
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I’ve been working on a few projects with my finished coloring pages and wanted to share another one with you.
This project is like my other post where I cut a colored in page into strips and glued them in an artistic design in a scrapbook. I’ll be using strips again in this project, but this time I’ll be weaving them.
I’ve seen this idea before in school projects and was reminded of it by this magazine cover I got years ago and had collected in a pile of ideas I wanted to try.
The one we’re working on today won’t look like the one on the cover because I’ve modified it. But feel free to get creative!
**Read ALL directions before beginning project.**
Materials Needed:
- Finished coloring pages you don’t mind cutting up
- Blank piece of paper (the same size or bigger than your colored page) in plain white or a coordinating color.
- Ruler
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Glue
Instructions to Prepare the Background:
Measure and trace a border around the edge of your blank piece of paper. My border was 1” all the way around, but you can make yours the size you like and that looks good with your page.
After you have your border marked, measure and mark lines about a ½” apart. (Don’t worry, all these marks will be on the back of the paper!)
**Take care in this next part!
I’m showing you the quickest way to make slits in the page without cutting the page apart.**
As you can see in the picture below, I’ve partially folded the paper in half the long way without creasing it hard. I also tried not to crease the border.
While holding the paper in half, cut along the lines so that it looks like a bunch of fringes when you’re done cutting.
Open the paper and turn it over. You can see the slits where you cut.
Instructions to Make the Weaving Strips:
First look at your page and decide if there is a direction in which it should be seen or the direction you will want to view it when it’s completed.
Put your colored page on a hard flat surface and measure out strips with your ruler and pencil. (With mine, I measured half inch (1/2″) strips on the long side of the paper. How you choose to measure and cut your page is up to you and the layout of your design. As you can see, the page I cut up didn’t need to be viewed a certain direction to make sense.)
Cut the paper into strips along the lines you traced with the ruler.
NOTE: If you want to view the page as it was before cutting, keep the strips in order as you cut them, or only cut one or two strips at a time.
Instructions to Weave:
Take one of your strips and weave it over and under the slits. After weaving it in, you’ll have to slide the strip carefully all the way to the bottom of the slits to align it.
Take another strip and weave it under and over, the opposite way as you just did it. Slide that strip down carefully also.
Continue weaving the rest of the strips, carefully aligning them as close to the last strip as possible. (I had to work at this a little to get it to look right.)
The last couple strips are the hardest to weave in so be careful as you’re going. If something rips, don’t worry because it can probably be glued back together.
To finish off the woven coloring design, glue the ends of the strips down onto the paper. (Gluing isn’t required, but it will probably to keep it together and make it sturdier.)
Let it dry and either glue it into a scrapbook page, like I did (pictured at top of post), or put it in a sheet protector for protection.
Be sure to let the page dry completely before closing your scrapbook or sliding it into a sheet protector! 😊
There really is no wrong way to do this! Be creative! Change the weaving pattern, mix-n-match coloring pages, add other materials such as ribbons, rick rack or anything else you can think of!
As I was finishing this post, I ran into a cool site where the artist uses her watercolor pages to create a ‘free-form’ style of weaving. She’s torn her strips before weaving, which is an awesome effect! (It’s also very similar to the cover page I collected.)
As I said, get creative!
Here’s to more creating with your finished coloring pages!
Sheri
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Update 4/23/2020
