Never Ending Card

Today's card is an example of a card with real "wow" factor.  It also shows what you can do when you want to have a lot of room for a group of people to write messages to someone.  It is called a "Never Ending Card" and is really a fun little card. The picture above is the front of the card.  You open it up from the center and see another page:

Open that from the center (this time top to bottom rather than side to side) and see another:

open that from the center and see another.  Instead of being shaped like a full page, this one is shaped more like a plus sign (hard to tell from the scan, but the corners are missing in the real thing):

Open this 4th page from the center and you are back at the beginning!  The top and bottom part of the 4th page are the same as what you see on the 3rd page, but these are the only parts that show up twice and the center part is completely new.  It's a great card for astonishing your friends! Of course, if you don't want as much room for messages as I did, you can decorate the pages any way you please.

Though it looks pretty complicated, it really isn't that hard to make.  However, I recommend making a sample one that you keep so you can remember how it works when you want to put others together.

• Start with two pieces of cardstock that are identical in size.
• Cut one in half lengthwise (so you get two identical long & skinny pieces) and the other in half crosswise (giving you two identical pieces that are short and fat). 
• Now, for each piece, fold the ends of the LONGEST sides so they meet in the middle. Here are some pictures - the red lines are cut lines and the blue dotted lines are the fold lines.  (The first picture is the one you cut in half lengthwise giving you two long and skinny pieces).

• Using a bone folder or the back of your thumbnail, thoroughly crease these folds.
• Now mark the CENTER of the shortest edges of each piece (on the outside edge, and on the foldline you just made), and lightly pencil a line from the outside edge to the foldline.  This along with the outer edges and fold line will help mark the edges of the area to glue (see above photos where they are marked "glue").
• Now, taking your long, thin pieces, place them on your work surface so they would fold toward the BACK (don't worry too much about this, if you get it wrong, you can just make the fold go the other way later).  Apply glue ONLY to these two pieces and ONLY on the areas marked "GLUE" above (but cover those areas well).  I use double-sided adhesive tape and make sure it lines up close to the edges of the glue area.
• Now comes the trickiest part.  Line your two skinny pieces up side by side as if they hadn't been cut in half.  Take one of your other two pieces and line it up along the TOP edges of your long, skinny pieces so the part marked "GLUE" on it lines up with the part you applied glue to (these ones should fold toward you - but again, you can just fold it the other way if you need to later). It should line up so that one edge is glued to 1 skinny piece, and the other edge of the same piece is glued to the 2nd skinny piece.  Repeat with the 2nd piece lining it up along the BOTTOM edges of your long, skinny pieces.  This is much harder to describe than it is to do.  The most important thing is to try to make sure that when you are done, the skinny pieces line up side by side without overlap so they look like they did before you cut them, and that the other pieces line up top to bottom without overlap in the same way.  The sections marked "GLUE" above should be adhered to each other with edges aligned, but no other parts glued.
• Now you can decorate the front of your card, being careful to leave the center part so it can open.
• Now "open" it along the center, exposing a new page to decorate.
• Repeat this twice more, noting that the last page will be more like a plus sign, while the rest will be full pages.

That's it.  You've done it!