Iris Folded Koi

Iris Folding Koi, originally uploaded by lothruin.

Yesterday I happened across some cards made using the iris-folding technique, and I thought they were lovely. The technique (I learned yesterday) uses long strips of paper folded in half and layered over the back of a frame to create the intricate designs you see from the front.

So I paged through some free templates and got an idea of how it all worked, then I sat down with a ruler and some photos of koi and got to work. I made up a template for the koi last night. (You can find it here. Use Flickr's image-sizing function to print different sizes.)

The koi itself is made of pages from a sample book of hand-made Japanese papers I've been hording for a couple of years now. The frame is a piece of heavy black card stock overlaid with a hand-painted coffee filter. For the coffee filter I really just winged it. I knew I wanted it sort of watery, so I glooped some acrylic paints in phthalo blue, teal and silver onto a plate, the put about a quarter inch of water in there and swirled it around and then gently touched the filter to the surface of the water and set it aside on another plate to dry. (It dried VERY fast, by the way.)

Overall I'm really pleased with the way it turned out and have already got template and color scheme ideas for two more Japanese-inspired designs.