Changes in Life, and Shaping Paper

Life brings us seasons. I had a wonderful season of about 2-3 years, as an orchidist. I met monthly with great educated and astute orchid bloomers at SEPOS, (SouthEastern Pennsylvania Orchid Society), meetings. And, in my relatively short season, I bloomed one orchid from it's original form. I will have to share that story some day,...it's very funny, but ended in catastrophe for my poor exotic plant. Anyhoo,...when I married and became pregnant, I knew that the orchid season was ending, (for now). Needy plants with a needy family were going to be too much for me. So, I gave all my orchids and supplies to a fellow SEPOS member.
That is the heart story behind today's highlighted paper and photo creation.

However, I wanted to share a little about a recent discovery about scrapbooking paper,...well, I should have thought about it much sooner,... ya know, with having probably learned it as I mouthed paper in toodlerhood! But, alas, as I started scrapbooking, I created a paradigm of working with dry paper as the way to shape my paper. Not anymore!!

Scrapbooking paper wet for about five seconds with water molds and shapes wonderfully! Please let me share these three projects to convince you, if you weren't already.

The first, highlighted above, was created by cutting five 2&1/4"x12" strips of patterned paper:

Punching one edge with a decorative border:

Soaking it in water for 5 seconds:

Blotting it dry with a paper towel:

And, folding it around the perimeter of a circle:


The second project was an extra project that I created for February's Scraptiv!ty kit. I took fifteen assorted strips of 2&1/2"x5" patterned paper, wet them as in the previous project:

And, rolled them into hollow cyclinders.

I created this layout with my rolled paper strips, (all elements except the 3 pearls and thickers were included in the February Scraptiv!ty kit, including the awesome stamp):

My third method of molding wet paper used a complete 12x12" sheet from a beautiful Webster's Pages patterned paper included in the Scraptiv!ty kit. I wet the whole sheet as before, for 5 seconds, patted it dry and shaped it around the bottom of a piece of tubberware. Unfortunately, I did not photograph this project in process. After I formed the edges up around the sides of my tubberware, I folded them down and scrunched them in for the inside sheet of patterned paper on this project, (all elements are from the Scraptiv!ty kit, except the ribbon and bling, and, the base is from the Scraptiv!ty packaging. The cardboard packaging was ink distressed and then embossed with gold embossing powder):
Have a marvelous and blessed day!