You will be missed Card

A very sweet lady that I work with is retiring after working at our museum for 13 years! She has been the backbone of our organization and volunteer core for a long time so I made her this card to give her on her last day of work this Thursday. It is a tri-fold shutter card and I learned how to make it by watching a YouTube video by Split Coast Crafters.

This is what the card looks like when laid out flat. I found it easier to lay mine out by looking at the example this way. Below is what it looks like folded up and ready for the envelope.

All of the colors and prints you see came from the Blossom Imagine cartridge and the shapes came from the Florals Embellished cartridge. I love both of them. I started with a 5 1/2" x 12" piece of cardstock. I scored it vertically on the 2", 4", 8" and 10" marks and then cut it horizontally 1 1/2" from the top edge from the 2" to the 10" score marks then I cut it again 1 1/2" from the bottom edge the same way.
After scoring and cutting you will then fold on each score mark back and forth like an accordian. Then open the card up and invert the center strip. The one that says "You will be missed" in the picture above. For each of the decorated pieces, I cut mats at 1/4" inch smaller than the section. For example, the tall narrow strip above with the bird on it, that section measures 2' wide by 5 1/2" tall so I cut the brown colored paper 1 3/4" wide by 5 1/4" tall. Then I cut the patterned paper and the cream colored cardstock 3/16" smaller than the mats. It was a lot of little cuts but so rewarding!

This is a detail of the butterfly. I cut it from Florals Embellished using only the silouhette and the blackout. I let all the pieces come out, inked it and then mounted it on the blackout and popped it up with dots and gave it a little bling!

This is a side view. You can choose to layout your papers any way you would like. I chose 3 colors/patterns to work with. That gives it good balance. There are a lot of videos out there showing a good variety.

I put one of my favorite verses on it by printing it on the cardstock strip. I don't have many stamps, so printing sentiments work better for me than buying stamps. I thought this verse was appropriate since my friend is a little nervous about what retirement will bring. I think I cut this bird at about 2 1/2" so it would fit across nicely. I probably could have cut it a little bit bigger. I inked each piece using the brown cats eye pigment ink from Color Box.