Mid Week blog#115 - Tucked Gatefold fun fold cards

 Hello & welcome to my blog,

My name is Alison & I am an independent Stampin' Up® demonstrator in Melbourne, Australia. I love creating cards & gifts for my loved ones & this blog will show you how to create something special for those you love. I blog twice a week, once on a Sunday where I mainly showcase a stamp set or dies & sometimes special DSP. My second blog is mid week on a Wednesday where I look at techniques, colour challenges, card sketches, fun folds, tools & equipment & ways to make or improve your projects. That's what this blog is about.

Fun Folds are one of my favourite ways of creating. They can take a simple card & add a little BOOM. When I first starting making cards a number of years ago the thought of making a fun fold was a little daunting. I didn't believe that I would be able to make the same type of beautiful creations that I was seeing on Facebook, Youtube & Pinterest. Over time & by watching many kind creators who put their videos and tutorials out there for all to share, I am now quite comfortable following along & even creating my own from scratch. Today I have a simple funfold called a Tucked Gatefold that was inspired by Rachel Tessman at Stamp Your Art Out. It is similar to a card I shared in my blog of 18.11.23. Here is a link to that blog. I am sharing 2 cards today, one I made with the help of a video from Rachel which is made with Imperial measurements & then I created one of my own in Metric. I hope you enjoy reading how they came about.

 

Here is the card I made using Rachel's instructions. I used materials I had on hand including a Cards 'n More card front. Next I'll share the card I made with Metric measurements,.

These three pics show the card closed & flat, closed but bent to show the wings that tuck in & opened up.

I started with Basic White cardstock measuring 21cm x 14.85cm. It was scored at 5, 10, 11 & 16cm. The folds are Valley, Mountain, Mountain & Valley. 

To decorate the wings I cut a piece of 11cm x 14.85cm Masterfully Made DSP with a large garden scene then trimmed accross at 5cm & 6cm. This gave me 2 5cm strips on either side of a 1cm strip.

These three strips were adhered from left to right of the card. It's important at this stage to remember that the DSP is going on the reverse side to that of the 1cm strip as shown in the following pic.

Next up was creating some decoration inside the card. I felt that the card was a little plain with just cardstock so I cut 2 more 5cm strips, the same as the front, & adhered them to the inside wings of the card. To balance out the DSP I added 2 strips of Berry Burst cardstock cut just slightly smaller than 5cm to allow for the scoreline.

In order for the wings to 'tuck' in you need a centre panel. Mine comprises of an 8.6cm x 11.6cm matte of Berry Burst, a 8cm x 11cm matte of Lost Lagoon & the Basic White matte which is used for the sentiment & decoration & measures 7.6cm x 10.6cm. The sentiment is stamped in Pretty Peacock.

The flowers & foliage were made using the Beautiful Friendship stamp set for the flowers & the Cheerful Daisies dies for the foliage. The flowers are stamped in Sweet Sorbet & Merry Merlot with some tiny buds stamped in Fresh Freesia. As the flowers are a 'Distinktive stamp set the image has some white areas when stamped. To fill in these areas I used a blending blush & Melon Mambo, Berry Burst & Fresh Freesia to get them as close as possible to the DSP flowers. The cheerful foliage is Lemon Lime Twist. 

I fiddled around with all of the flowers & sprigs until I was happy with the combinations then carefully applied liquid glue to the foliage & glue dots & liquid glue to the main body of the decoration.

The nest step was to cut a slightly smaller matte in Basic White for the inside panels. Greenery was stamped in Lemon Lime Twist.

The final step was to align the dimensionals along the spine of the card. To ensure that there was no overhang I placed the front panel beside the centre of the card before adhering the centre of the panel.

Here is a pic of the finished card, again, to show how it aligns seamlessly.

I really enjoyed playing around with this card. Converting Imperial measurements was always a little daunting for me, but with practice it is getting easier each time. I love how this card turned out. It's a little different but very pretty. There's room to write a personal message on the white panels or if you have more that you want to say, you could add some more on the reverse of the card. Once the centre panel was adhered I finished with some retired Blue Adhesive Backed gems.

That's it for this week's blog. I hope you enjoyed this fold & give it a try. If you decide to create your own card I would love to see your creations so please feel free to pop over to my facebook page at craftebyalison & share your pics. 

My next blog is on Sunday & I will be CASE'ing some of the creations from the new Annual Catalogue.  Next week's mid week blog is all about colour. There is a section of the new catalogue that shows you how to mix & match colours & this will be the basis of next week's blog. I hope you can join me for both of them as I think you'll love them!

Til next time, take care & keep creating! XX Alison