Gothic Bride Garland

Ah June.  It’s the time of increasingly sweltering temperatures, long days, bored children with cabin fever, and, for some unknown reason, weddings.  If you need some quick and easy decorations for your 14th wedding or just for a Wednesday, this papel picado-based garland is fun and easy to make.  With this same stamp and same technique, you can make yourself a garland of gothic brides, corpse brides, zombie brides, or Catrinas just by changing your coloring.  Multitasking at its finest.

Materials:

• Gothic Bride digistamp kit (includes gothic bride, a printable sheet of four brides, and the floopy loopy background)
• Markers or pencils or other coloring medium of choice
• Tissue paper
• Sharp scissors and craft knife
• Yarn, string, or something to hang them off of.

               

First, print the background or draw a fancy thing for yourself.  Fold your tissue paper and staple the design to it and then cut it out following the instructions in the Christmas ornament papel picado tutorial.

Once you have a pile of delicate tissue ovals, print out your digistamps and color to your heart’s content.  I printed my stamps on Copic Manga paper – it’s only slightly thicker than tissue paper, so it doesn’t weigh down my frames.

To color mine, I used Copic and Prismacolor markers with white gelpen details.  I cut them out and, using a glue stick, attached the bride to the frame.  Of course, I also ripped one of the loops and had to do some creative cutting.  I’m classy like that.  Cut a rectangle of tissue paper in a contrasting color and glue it to the back of your frame, making sure you have enough left on top to wrap around a piece of yarn.

      

Cut your yarn, slap some glue on the tissue paper and fold it over the yarn, and you’re done.

      

If you want to go a little crazy and/or fancy, you can decorate your garland with beads, flowers, skulls, or whatever else your little heart desires before hanging it to decorate the altar at your midnight wedding or Tuesday night poker game.  I’m not the only one who would keep this stuff up all year, am I?