Fun Folds for a Fun Blog Hop!

Aloha, all!

     This weekend is the third Blog Hop for the summer Stampin' Up! group to which I belong, VC Rocks! The VC stands for "Virtual Cruise," and it's for anyone who loves Stampin' Up! products but won't be joining in the summer cruise provided as an incentive trip by Stampin' Up!

     An important part of any Stampin' Up! get together is display boards featuring themed projects presented by Stampin' Up! demonstrators. The closest we can come to this for an online group is a Blog Hop. Yes, we have a theme, and everyone in the hop will have a project with the same theme. For July 2016, our theme is "Cruisin' With Fun Folds." So here I am with my fun fold for the weekend, a gatefold card!

     A Gatefold Card has a fold on both sides of the card, with the card opening in the middle. Most of the time, with a simple gatefold card, the card opens and closes as easily as a regular card with just one side fold. But, in the case of this card, I got carried away and ended up with far too many layers for this card to stay folded in any position. So I created what is nown as a "Belly Band" to slip over the folded card to keep it closed. That's what in the photo over on the right. This is how the card looks when it's closed, with the belly band keeping it that way.

     Now you'll want to know what it is that's decorating that card! The stamp set is the Seaside Shore Stamp Set and the Designer Series Paper is the By the Shore DSP Set. The colors featured in this card are Calypso Coral and Dapper Denim, with a few touches of Mint Macaron and Pool Party.

     My favorite part of this card is that rope that goes the whole width of the inside of the card, and wraps around the whole belly band (it's there on the back, even if you can't see it!). It's actually two stamps strung together to make it look like one. I didn't do too bad a job if I say so myself! One of the stamps is the knot, with an open end extending to both the right and left of the knot. The second stamp is a length of rope. If you are really, really careful, you can stamp them up against one another so that you can barely see where one stamp ends and the other begins. To do this, I used the Stamp-a-ma-jig, which is sold by Stampin' Up! 

     You may have read in one blog post or another that I frequently use the MISTI stamp aligner. This is great for aligning photopolymer stamps, but is a bit limited for aligning rubber stamps, as the stamps in this set are. So out came the Stamp-a-ma-jig. If you're considering buying a stamp aligner, this is a tool that works well and is not too expensive at all. Just click on the photo below to go to my Stampin' Up! store to learn more about it. Oh, and it comes with instructions!

     As it's pretty much a VC Rocks rule to use embellishments in all of our shared projects, I added in some Enamel Shapes on the card front. One of them is Dapper Denim from the 2016-2018 In Color Set. In this set, there are 40 shapes of each color as there are only 5 colors to share the wealth of 200 pieces. The other color I used was Calypso Coral, from the Subtles Set. In this set, there are only 20 shapes per color, so I ran out of small circles (I've used this color a lot this year so far!) so you'll see a teeny star somewhere on this card.

     I have a couple of hints about making a card with this fold, and most are based on my own experiences, which led to some, um, design modifications as I went along. First, unless it's really important to you, don't layer this card so that there is most than one width of cardstock where the card folds. First of all, it won't fold well; secondly, you'll need to use an odd size of paper to make sure that the card sides meet in the middle as they should. It's better to layer up each inside as well as outside element with its own set of layers. Both problems are solved if you do. My card is just a teensy bit wider than I would have liked – but with my "design modifications," it did finally end up meeting in the middle.

     I hope you're enjoying our little blog hop. Be sure to go back to the VC Rocks Blog to find links to the other participants in the hop!

     Here are the products that I featured in today's project: