A couple of cards and a mini tutorial

American Crafts have come out with some lovely paper designs recently, including their Abode range, which you can find in the shop here.

As the papers feature houses I thought they would be perfect for 'New Home' cards. For the first card I stamped an image onto white card using the Hero Arts Row of Houses Stamp, which I also embossed with some clear embossing powder. After adding the image to my card I added a punched border and some ribbon to finish off.

For the second card I decided to do something a bit more elaborate, so chose a stepper card design. I have shown on the diagram at the end of the post where the cut and fold lines are if you want to make your own. 

To summarise, firstly trim you piece of A4 card to 28cm long (width stays the same). Mark up where you want your folds at 2.5cm, 5cm, 9.5cm,14cm and 21cm (use a pencil so you can rub out afterwards) I have drawn arrows on my diagram to show how far up the card the fold lines need to be (these are not cut lines). There is only one cut line on the whole card - how far across you put this is entirely up to you - this means you can adjust so that you have bigger or smaller steps. Decide on this measurement first so you know how far across your fold lines need to go. It is then a case of folding the card, mountain folds and valley folds alternating as marked on my diagram. I would recommend using a bone folder to make your creases for a neater finish. Once finished the card fits and C5/A5 envelope.

I cut out the little houses from the patterned paper to make rows of houses, I glued them to the steps with a little bit of glue at the base of each house.

Here is the diagram of the card construction (you can click on this to see it bigger) -