Aloha, all!
Back when I first started this blog – can you believe it's been TWO YEARS!!?? – I was making my very first swaps for the Stampin' Up! Convention. One swap was a "no-layer" card and I used a round punch to make windows in the card front so that an image from the inside showed through. Ever since then, I've used different ways of punching shapes to provide "windows" through which to view pictures.
Recently I came across instructions for making a 4-pane window to frame an image. The instructions used retired products (as many of my tutorials have ended up doing! – I'll try to fix that soon). I really liked the idea, so I updated it using, um, fairly current products. The "fairly" in that statement is that I am not yet replacing my entire collection of punches with Stampin' Up!'s new style of punches. While I LOVE the new style – so much easier to store as well as to use – my checkbook is not yet supporting doing all the replacement that needs to be done. And so the instructions for making the window for this card use the still useful "old" style 1-1/4" Square Punch. As I use this punch for a lot of my projects, and likely a lot of my tutorials, I will probably purchase the new style sooner than later. But for now, instructions for making the window for this card are here.
Besides the 4-pane window, you might be interested to know about some of the other Stampin' Up! products and techniques that I used to make this card. I originally thought I'd use my Watercolor Wonder Crayons for this card. But I really wanted to capture the lovely new color, Marina Mist. Unfotunately that color is not available in the Watercolor Wonder collection yet. So I decided just to use my Stampin' Write Markers to try the watercolor look. Wow, it sure worked wonderfully! I colored the stamp from the set, Inspired by Nature with the markers (the other colors are Daffodil Delight and Garden Green) and then spritzed them a bit with Stampin' Mist Stamp Cleaner (it's the closest spray bottle to the craft room table!). Nice look!
I trimmed the window to 4-1/8" x 4-1/8", placed the stamped image behind it, then adhered it to a card made of Daffodil Delight, stamped with a sentiment from that old faithful stamp set, Sincere Salutations. The butterflies are made with the Sizzix Embosslit Beautiful Wings, and the ribbon is Marina Mist 5/8" Satin Ribbon.
Before I layered everything up, I texturized the window layer using the Square Lattice Embossing Folder. I have a couple of notes about that. If you texturize with an embossing folder AFTER you have made the windows, you'll skew the shape and width of everything a bit. But it doesn't look too bad. I tried a sample made by texturizing the card stock FIRST, and THEN punching the windows. All in all, I think that I like the latter technique better. Why don't you try it out and let me know what YOU think!
Have fun with the project!
