Publisher – Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN-13: 978-1-4027-3503-5
ISBN-10: 1-402703503-0
Review by Sandy Laipply, PaperCrafts Editor, BellaOnline
Artist and author Marie Browning has done it again with Traditional Card Techniques. With over one million books in print, many might think Marie would be running out of fresh ideas. Not so, as this book clearly demonstrates. Even if you have been papercrafting for a long time, you’re sure to find a technique, product or tool that’s new to you in this book. Marie includes projects featuring mola cutting, iris folding, fancy folding, tea bag folding, paperpiercing, pressure embossing, parchment crafting, paper punching and spirelli.
The chapter entitled Basic Supplies’ covers all the supplies you will need to complete the projects in the book. Most papercrafters already own most of these supplies, but Marie introduces you to a few new ones, and shows the proper way to use many of them.
The chapter on mola cutting was especially interesting to me. A mola is a traditional fabric appliqué technique from the San Blas Islands off the eastern coast of Panama. I lived in Panama for a year and saw many molas, but it never occurred to me to adapt the technique to papercrafting! Marie gives us 11 different cards with patterns for each.
Iris folding is explained next, with several examples, and wonderful “fancy fold” cards, which are an adaptation of iris folding. Next come simple tea bag folded star and medallion cards. Paper Piercing is an easy to learn technique that can turn an ordinary card into something extraordinary, and Marie gives us several examples, including a card designed to hold a lavender sachet.
The chapter dealing with punched cards includes patchwork, fold and punch, medallions and tapa technique (another technique adapted from cloth decorating.)
I can’t decide if the spirelli cards (a method of thread embellishing and embroidery) or the parchment crafted projects are my favorite. Guess I’ll have to make all of them!
The photos in the book are excellent, with many full-page pictures of the projects as well as some step outs. The instructions are clearly written, the materials used are listed, and the patterns included are full sized. There is even a pattern for a Braille alphabet in the paperpiercing chapter!
Buy this book if you want inspiration as well as how-to for a large variety of papercrafting techniques, and some delicious eye candy. Don’t buy this book if you want to duplicate the projects exactly – the materials list says “ gold peel off stickers” instead of the exact sticker used. I don’t see this as a problem – I’ll be using the book as a stepping off point for many hours of papercrafting fun! You can get your copy of Traditional Card Techniques at www.Amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.com/Paper-Crafts-Workshop-Traditional-Techniques/dp/1402735030/ref=sr_1_5/002-0854559-7351226?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186947663&sr=1-5
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