OSW Class Samples

Last night I taught the One Sheet Wonder technique at the scrapbook store.

The One Sheet Wonder (or OSW), for those of you who don't know, is when you take one sheet of patterned or stamped paper and cut it up into pieces to use as accents on cards. You will need to have to corresponding amount of card bases for the template.

Now there are TONS of OSW templates floating around but I have a couple that I really like. One is an 8 card template and the other is a 10 card template. The 10 card template originally came from LeeAnn Greff. Anyone can make a OSW template - it just requires a bit of planning.

There were 12 ladies in the class last night and some had never even used a trimmer before. I gave them all a 5 page handout that including cutting diagrams. We were working with 12x12 paper (5 sheets of solid colour card stock - Bazzills) and 1 sheet of patterned paper. I actually like working with this size of paper better than the 8 1/2 x 11 - you get so many pieces left over for matting and accents.

Usually I pick the paper, card themes and embellishments and then everyone makes the same cards with some personal variations. Last night I decided to try something different and so I let the customers roam around the store and pick their own papers. I told them to pick their patterened piece first - I called that their "starting off" paper. Then they were to pick 5 sheets of solid colour paper for their card bases and matting. The solid paper could be 5 different colours or 3 colours with 2 sheets of 2 colours.

Although it took a bit of time (20 minutes) for all 12 to pick their paper I think it worked very well. I wandered through the store and helped them to choose a suitable pattern to begin with before they moved on to the solid paper racks.

For the OSW technique you need a pattern that is small to medium and not too much white or solid space. I don't like to work with words - you don't want to offend anyone with a badly positioned cut!

These are the papers I picked for my samples:

It was an interesting bunch last night! I had a group of 4 who where there to get ideas for wedding invitations and so they picked paper with muted colours. There was a mother and daughter there and the mom wanted generic cards and the daughter wanted girly cards. There was also 2 sisters who just whipped through the class and left early - completing their cards long before anyone else!


The funniest thing was the customer who had never done this before or as she put it "I've never scrapbooked in my life so I'm really happy to be here." I was kind sorry to tell her "You still haven't scrapbooked. This is a card making class!" She got a good laugh out of that!

There were a couple of really nice ladies, all dolled up, in their late 50s who picked some great paper but at one point one of them made a cut that did not follow the template. I heard her say "Oh no, I've messed this up!". I told her "With the OSW there are no mistakes. You've just come up with your own variation."

Because this was a "technique" class the customers didn't actually embellish or add images or greetings to their cards. It took 2 hours for them to pick paper, cut the paper, plan and assemble their cards. There wasn't any time to add anything else to this class but they were happy to take it all home and embellish and finish their cards later.

Anyway, here are some of the samples that I displayed at last night's class. I purposely did not embellish these too much but I did use Stampin' Up! Sincere Salutations for greetings.
I was trying to stress that you can make quick cards that look nice!