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Ive been collecting pretty glass baubles for our Christmas tree for a number of years. But the closure of one of my

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favourite local stores and the lack of pretty baubles this year has meant Ive not added as many to my collection as

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normal. Everything this year appears to have been attacked with a glitter gun! So I decided to make a couple of baubles.

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Tutorial

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A few weeks ago I stumbled across some amazing paper weaving work by PaperMatrix and I was determined to give it
a try. These fabulously talented ladies have used Rhino software to create 3D woven paper spheres. They make
absolutely gorgeous large Christmas baubles!

So I got to work and made up Sphere 1, Sphere 2 and Sphere 3. Actually I made four sphere 1s, getting
the technique right. I tried with paper and with 200 gsm card. And whilst working with paper makes it easier, I didnt like
the finished product as much and so moved to working with card stock.

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The process results in some gorgeous patterns! I had to document them; here are the results.

To make these youll either need some fabulous cutting skills (as every millimeter counts) or a paper cutter. From the
videos it appears that PaperMatrix use a Cameo cutter very successfully.

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I used my Graphtec ce5000-40 and adjusted the templates in illustrator so that they cut quicker (and didnt require use
of scissors to remove the pieces) by joining all of the open ends together, as well as scaling the pieces down a little so
that I could cut all 24 pieces out on one A3 piece of card stock.

The written instructions on each post really are quite limited, so I was struggling initially. But then I stumbled across this
video and it all fell into place. The video is of the making of the hot air balloons (next on my list!) but the same technique
is used for the spheres. The music can get quite annoying after 8 minutes straight but its really informative.

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The first step is to lay out the 24 pieces into two disks that are adhered together to create the 12 legged starfish-like
panels that you weave together. This part drove me crazy, until I discovered that the tabs dont align perfectly with eachother or with the disk your sticking them to (see last image in this post). Once this was discovered it all got much
easier!

Sphere #003 is both easier and harder to weave together. The spacing between the strips allow for more movement,
but they also tend to catch on each-other and so care is needed when weaving them together. I also found it easier not
to worry about aligning up the circle panels perfectly until after Id completed the sphere. Theres quite a bit of
movement and youll never get them aligned exactly all the way along.

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Once Id completed the bauble, I glued some ribbon to a disk and tucked it under the pomegranate end of the sphere,
this gave me a nice clean overall look to the top of the bauble whilst still leaving the tabs exposed as I quite like the look
of them.

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Click on the links following to link to the posts and download the templates for each of the spheres:
Sphere #001
Sphere #002
Sphere #003

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Im exceedingly happy with the results and cant wait to make some more! Ive dreams of making a couple of really big
one for my husbands office decorations next year.

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The layout of the center tabs and how theyre aligned with the circular support tab.

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