Two Piece Stepper Cards Revisited

Today's card finishes up the "A Very Merry Christmas Deco Large - Toyshop Treasures" collection (at least my half of it! :) )  This last card is a two-piece step card, made with the left over adorable scorable from this collection.  I simply combined these with gold poster board & embossed a red greeting (from Christmas Words - HOTP) - fussy cutting around the presents.

The rest of this post is all about creating two piece stepper cards.

While I find the two piece stepper much easier to make than the single piece that you cut with slits, I have run into two challenges:

1. The first challenge is remembering the dimensions I need to use to cut this card.
2. The second is that when I go and look up the dimensions, they are sometimes for a different sized card than I want to make.

I decided both of these dilemmas could be solved if I would think through the structure a little more & come up with a "rule of thumb" set of dimensions.  There's a great video which helped me with that (thank you Scrapbookingstation!).  So, here are the basics:

1. FOCAL PIECE: The piece for the main focal should be cut twice as high as you want your finished card and just as wide as you want the focal. Then you'll simply score it in half (half of the longest dimension).  So, if I want my card to be 5" x 7" with a 4" wide focal, I'll cut this piece 10" x 4" and score at 5".
2. BASE PIECE: The base will need to be twice as tall as you want your finished card to be and as wide as you want your card.   Now, you'll score by measuring along the longest side, but where you score depends on how high you want your step.  You will need to score at the height you want your step, then at double that, then divide the remaining and score it in half.  For example, for a 5" x 7" card with a 1" step, I'll cut a piece that is 10" x 7" and score it at 1", 2", and 6" (2" is double the 1" step, and the remaining is 8".  Half of 8" is 4" - which, added to the last score line at 2" = 6").  As a second example, if I wanted steps that were 1 1/2" tall, I would score at 1 1/2", 3" and 6 1/2" (double 1 1/2 is 3, remaining is 7 - half of 7 is 3 1/2 - 3 1/2 + 3 (the 2nd score line) is 6 1/2")

To make more than one step, you can start out the same way - with pieces the same size as before.  The difference will be that your base piece will be scored & folded differently.   Experimentation is the best way to get the steps you want, but I have one hint (again thanks to Scrapbookingstation).  The inner part of each step does NOT need to come all the way down.  Unless it's important to you that the inside of each step sit on the table, I suggest this for a card with 3 steps:

1. IMPORTANT: I haven't tried the following instructions for a really wide variety of sizes, so treat them as just a starting point.  Cut a scrap piece of paper the same size as your base piece & experiment with it to get the steps where you want them before scoring your base card!
2. Decide how high you want your BACK step to be & score that.  We'll call this score line A.  For example, assume I am making a 5" x 7" card, so have cut a piece that is 7" x 10".  If I want my back step to be 3", my score line A will be at 3".  (Note that you need your back step to be shorter than if you made a standard single step card, or you won't have room to make other steps.)
3. Decide how much lower you want your middle step to be relative to your back step, and add that amount plus 1" to your previous score line and score line B here.  Continuing my example, if I want my next step at 2" tall, that is 1" difference from my back step.  So I'll add 1" + 1" + 3" and score my line B at 5" from the right.  
4. Next, score line C 1" to the left of score line B.  For my example, score line B was at 5" so score line C will be at 6".
5. Now, how high do you want your front step - and how much lower is this than your middle step?  Add that number to score line C and draw a light pencil line here for LINE D (do NOT score - you will later erase this line!).  Continuing my example, let's assume I want the front step to be 1" tall.  This is 1" lower than my middle step, so I will add 1" to 6" to draw a light line at 7".
6. Now, you already decided how high you want your front step.  Turn your card stock around and score that distance from the other edge (if all your score lines have been from the left, you want this to be measured from what would have been the right side of the paper before you turned it around.)  We'll call this SCORE LINE Z.  For my example, my front step is to be 1" tall, so I'll turn my card stock around and score 1" from the opposite edge from all the other measurements I've made.  So my score line Z is at 1".
7. NOW, what is the distance between score line Z and your pencil line?  Divide this number in half and add to the line Z amount to get your last score line (measured from the same edge as line Z).  For my example, there are 2" between my pencil line and my line Z.  Half of that is 1".  So, I'll add 1" to line Z (which was 1") to get my last score line at 2".
8. Erase your pencil line, starting from line Z, mountain fold, then valley fold, then mountain fold, etc - alternating until your last score line which should also be a mountain fold.  Firmly crease all fold lines.  Try it with your focal piece to make sure it works as you wish it to work.

A Very Merry Christmas - Toyshop Treasures

I'm finally getting back to the Hunkydory "A Very Merry Christmas Deco Large" set.  For these 5 cards I used 1/2 the deco large set called "Toyshop Treasures" & 1/2 the coordinating Little Book pages and a part of the coordinating papers & inserts.  In my half of this set's materials, I still have some of the coordinating papers & inserts & all of the adorable scoreable sheet.

I had a hard time getting good pictures.  This first one has a red embossed background (Swiss Dots Cuttlebug embossing folder), a gold die cut & embossed mat for the focal (Spellbinder's Tileworks), a little book page with deco pieces added, and a sentiment from the 2016 Essential book of Christmas Greetings (used for several of these cards).

Next up is this one:

I get tired of the same old picture, so for this one I took one of the largest deco pieces and cut it in half.  One half went to the inside of the card (didn't get a picture of the inside), and the other piece went on the card front after I had added some Luna Paste (Cosmic Shimmer) to try to create a snowy scene.  I also added a little distress ink using a sponge applicator.   It's matted on gold poster board.  The border & sentiment are from the set.  The boy & sled are some of the deco pieces, the tree, Mom & little girl were all fusy cut from a little book page.

Third card is a little book page matted on red metallic poster board.  I added some deco pieces & a sentiment from the 2016 Essential book.

Next up is the main background meant for the deco pieces.  I added a few of the deco pieces. Borders are part of a die cut piece of gold poster board (Spellbinder's 5 x 7 Heirloom Legacy set).  I trimmed the lacy parts off & stuck them on either side of the picture - saving the rest for another project.

And the fifth card was made with a little book page and gold poster board cut with a die from Spellbinder's 5 x 7 Renaissance Jeweled Frame.  I traced the inside of the die so I could fussy cut the picture to fit inside.  These pictures aren't great, but one of the things I did was to cut a couple of pieces from a transparent glitter sheet & added them to just the tree & the toy shop window.  It produces a great effect in real life.  Nice and shimmery.  There are a few deco pieces & a sentiment from the essential book to finish it off.

The insides of all these cards are decorated, but since they weren't really anything special, I didn't get pictures of the insides.

Dance With Me Green

Today I have a couple of cards made from some freebies on the Debbie Moore website.  They come from the one titled "Project of the Month December".  I've paired them with some green metallic poster board - embossed with a Linked Circles European A4 size embossing folder (Teresa Collins) - and some green Jewel Dazzles (HOTP).  I printed the cut outs on a mat photo paper, that is the texture of lightweight card stock & I really like the way they turned out!

Here's the inside of this first one:

For the 2nd card, I used my Damask embossing folder (Darice) and decided to add a bit more "bling" by spraying shimmer spritz over the pieces:

I was afraid I might have bad bleeding of the images, but as you can see, they held up well!  Here's the inside:

Dance With Me

Here are 2 cards made with freebie images from the Debbie Moore website ("Christmas Fashion Divas").  First up is a tall card.  In addition to the freebies, I used black and white card stock with Golden Glow Opal Polish (Cosmic Shimmer) and an embossing folder (European Tapistry 5 x 7 3D folder by Spellbinders).

Here's the inside:

Here's a second card using images from the same printout. This time I added red and green metallic poster board - embossed with the Damask 5 x 7 folder (Darice). 

I matted the sentiment on a piece of red metallic poster board - die cut with a die from Spellbinder's Beaded Circles set.  This was then added to the card with foam tape.

The inside is simply another picture from the printout - along with a cut out bow.