Aloha, all!
It’s Tuesday again, and time for my Tuesday Technique, which this month is simple fun fold cards. Nothing too complicated, and they all use just half a sheet of cardstock. In the case of today’s card, once you’ve cut your half of the cardstock, you pretty much have to make another of the same kind of card with the other half. This is not a bad thing by any means!
Cutting Cardstock on the Diagonal
Begin by scoring a full sheet of cardstock vertically at 4-1/4″ and horizontally at 5-1/2″. Then cut the cardstock diagonally from top right to bottom left. When you look at the cut in a picture, that cut looks pretty simple. To use a bit of a trite phrase, “Easy Peasy.” Not necessarily.
The Stampin’ Up! Paper Trimmer is not quite long enough to cut that diagonal line. However, I made it work most of the way by removing the scoring blade, which I keep on one end of my Trimmer. Then I was able to fit both corners into the Trimmer. The cutting blade couldn’t quite make it to the corners of my paper, though. So the last two cuts, one at each end, I had to make with my paper snips.
Hey, if anyone has a better idea, do let me know! I do still own one of the retired guillotine paper cutters. That works just fine with this. But I had to try with something current product, which many of you have.
This card just uses one half of the cardstock. I made a different card with the other half.
Now the Folds
The dotted lines are fold lines. Fold the top section down and the left section to the right. DON’T CREASE THE FOLDS YET! Make sure that the diagonal lines meet in the center of the card. This is pretty much the same operation as the basic gatefold last week. Hold the two diagonal cut lines together in the middle of the card and use your other hand to crease the folds using a Bone Folder.
That’s it for the fold!
Decorating Is Easy!
For this card, I used products from the Boho Indigo Product Medley. You saw this paper not too long ago in the card I made for my grandson’s 20th Birthday last month. I love the tropical themes in this paper, so I have no doubt I’ll use it up quickly. I not only made triangles with the printed paper, I also made a mat for the papers.
A New Tip for Today: To make layers for a diagonally-shaped area, cut each layer 1/4″ shorter on both sides than the previous layer. In this case, the bottom layer is the 4-1/4″ wide by 5-1/2″ high card base. So the cardstock layer (in this case, Misty Moonlight) should be 4″ wide by 5″ high. When you cut this on the diagonal and adhere it to the cardbase, it will be 1/8″ smaller all around. The paper layer cut the same way is 3-3/4″ wide by 5″ high.
Can You Use the Stitched Triangles Dies for This?
You might be thinking something that I thought as I was making this card: I wonder if those Stitched Triangle Dies would work with this? No. The right triangles in that set are equilateral right triangles – both sides are the same measurement. With this kind of a card, one side is larger than the other. But if you were to make a square card, they would work beautifully!
Other Medley Products
The Boho Indigo Product Medley is like all the other product medleys that Stampin’ Up! has created. So there are sheets of die-cut images and sheets of labels. For Boho Indigo, just about everything has a gold feature in it. The three leaf elements and the label on the front of the card are all die-cuts included in the kit. This particular label has an opening for a ribbon at the top. But I covered that with one of the leaves. The stamp is from the Rooted In Nature Stamp Set.
And On the Inside…
As you might well expect, when you open the card, it’s a really big triangle! You certainly could leave it alone. You’d have lots of space for writing a note. But I like to decorate those large inside sections. For this I used another of the papers in the Boho Indigo Product Medley. I used the same method as above to cut the paper.
Another Tip: When you use printed paper to accent the inside of the card this way, use a print that doesn’t have a definite direction. This is because one of the triangles of paper is going to be upside down.
About That Label Element
As I said above, I used a leaf to hide the top part of the label that I used on the front of the card. But when I looked inside, there was that label again, and I definitely did not like the look. So, before I adhered it to the front of the card, I used another of the same die-cut label and adhered it to the back of the stamped label. Then I added another of the leaves that I used on the front, leaving its stem intact. Now it looks just fine on the inside!
The Bottom Line – The Other Criterion for a Gate Fold
You may recall that, besides using just one half of a sheet of cardstock for a gatefold card, the other criterion to which I adhere is that the card has to be able to stand on a table or shelf on its own. This card meets that criterion, too!
The bottom part of the diagonal gate opens up and lets that card stand up just beautifully! And that’s the bottom line!
I hope you have fun with whatever you’re making this week. I think that this would be a fun fold to try!
