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.