A Tutorial - kinda/sorta

Still feeling under the weather a bit (must be the dull, rainy days) so this weekend I decided to just do some blog hopping and make a couple of cards.
Thanks to an on-line scrapping buddy I was pointed in the direction of a new blog - chic n' scratch. I love it and have added it to my fave's list on the right. It is chock full of tips, techniques, tutorials and tons of inspiration. Anyways, I saw a card on there that I thought I'd make - it was cute and simple - perfect!
It's a tri-fold card. I decided to make two of them - heck if you're going to pull everything out and make a mess you may as well go for it.
I'm going to give you the dimensions and basic instructions hence the title - a tutorial - kinda/sorta!
These are the ones I made - a 'Happy Birthday' one and a 'hello baby' one. (both stamps are Stampin' Up)






I like to cut all my paper first, so this is what you'll need -
11.0 X 4 1/4 - for the actual card base (we'll call this colour #1)
2 3/4 X 2 3/4 - colour #1
2 1/4 X 2 1/4 - colour #1
2 1/2 X 2 1/2 - colour #2
2.0 X 2.0 - colour #2
1 3/4 X 1 3/4 - colour #3 (white or cream)
4.0 X 3 1/4 - colour #3 (inside sentiment)
4.0 X 1 3/4 - colour #4 (see *note)
1 1/2 X 1 1/2 - (optional - see **note)

Note:
* - colour #4 is the panels on the front of the card. They can either be in a patterned paper, a cardstock run thru your Big Shot and given some texture or a fabric, lace, whatever - use your imagination.
** - You can either stamp a greeting or image onto your small white piece for the centre (as I did on the 'Happy Birthday' card) or you can cut a smaller piece of patterned paper and adhere to small white piece (as I did on 'hello baby' card)



Okay, are you with me so far?

Good - now score your card base at 2 inches and again at 3 3/4 inches. Now do the same on the other end.
Use a bone folder and neatly crease, folding the 2" line back and the 3 3/4" line forward. (if you look closely you'll see that I messed mine up - oopsy!)

It should look like this:



Adhere your panels onto the sides of card front.

Adhere your large white piece onto the inside of your card.

Now start layering to make your centre square:
Start with your 2 3/4 X 2 3/4 colour #1
Add your 2 1/2 X 2 1/2 colour #2
Add your 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 colour #1
Add your 2.0 X 2.0 colour #2

now either stamp a sentiment or image or adhere your 1 1/2 X 1 1/2 piece of patterned paper onto your piece of small white cardstock.
Use a pop dot or dimensional to adhere this to the centre of your layered square.

Now simply adhere this to the left side of your card center.

And voila! Go ahead and embellish as you like.I added a flower and pearl to my HB card but kept the other one simple by just inking the pp and white cs edges before adhering.

I like this card because it's so versatile. You can stamp or not, colour or not, paste or not, add embellies or not, use patterned paper or not and you can make it for any occassion.

I hope I didn't make it sound complicated. It really is easy - promise!

Have a good week.