Hi everyone. It’s Bonnie here with another Tuesday Card Post. Have you seen the amazing Laurel Burch Stamps which Barb added to the shop recently. Oh my word, they are gorgeous…each and every one of them! I was so inspired that I had to colour one up to create an easel card. My biggest problem was choosing only one main image. Trust me…you’ll be seeing more projects with these.

There are all kinds of variations of easel cards but I decided to stick to the very simple one involving minimal folds and steps. I cut a 12 x 12 inch piece of black cardstock in half to get two 6 x 12 pieces. One of these will become the card base. I then cut the other half into a 6 x 6 piece which will become the card front. Using my Scor-Buddy, I scored the 6 x 12 inch piece at the 6 inch mark and again at the 3 inch mark along the long (12″) edge. Remember to do this on the wrong side or the back of the paper. If your paper is the same both sides, this won’t matter. Fold along the scored lines using a bone folder or the plastic one from the Scor-Buddy. The 3 inch line is a mountain fold and the 6 inch one is a valley fold.

I put Scor Tape on the four sides of the 3 inch section, making sure that you are applying it to the right side (in my case, the textured side). Collapse the card base along those fold lines so that the 3 inch section is lying flat on top of the 6 inch base (like a zigzag). The top of the 3 inch section is actually the edge that is touching the floor in the photo above. It will be the edge lined up with the 6 inch fold.

Remove the Scor Tape and line up the top of the 3 inch section with the top of the 6 x 6 inch extra square cut earlier and adhere. From the side, it will look like the photo above. You can see that when I pushed the card front down flat, it will line up with the other 6 x 6 square of the base.

You can see where the card front is overlapping the card base in this photo. The zigzag fold is now flattened.

I wanted the card front to have a white panel as background for the stamped image. I cut a 5.25 inch square of mixed media paper to use for this. Purple and Turquoise Colourcraft Brusho Crystal Colours were sprinkled onto the square and then spritzed with water. When this was dry, I decided I wanted the purple to be more purpley (LOL) so I dabbed some Lindy’s Stamp Gang Witch’s Potion Purple Starburst Spray onto those areas with a brush and then spritzed them with water. I liked that much better plus I now had some shimmer.

Once that was thoroughly dry, I edged the square with black Big Brush pen and matted it with green cardstock. To break up the colour and add more interest, Ranger Texture Paste was scraped through Kaisercraft Criss Cross Designer Template.

I stamped all of the images from Laurel Burch Flutterbye Cling Stamp and Laurel Burch Indigo Cats Cling Stamp, some of them twice. I know that I will be using them all for other cards. They were stamped onto white cardstock using an acrylic stamp mount and Jet Black Archival Ink.

The Flutterbye image as well as three of the butterflies from the Indigo Cats set were coloured with a mix of coloured pencil brands including Derwent Colour Soft Pencils. They were then fussy cut leaving a narrow white border, both to help them stand out against the black and to make those antennae a little larger and stronger.

Peacock, Black Diamond, and Icicle Stickles were added to the large butterfly. Wish I could have captured the sparkle in this photo.

The butterfly was popped up on foam squares and a length of cheesecloth was added under it to help it show a little better and also to add texture.

Here are the smaller butterflies which have to be popped up on foam to make the card work. The sentiment was printed on white, trimmed into individual words, and matted with green. Scor Tape was used to glue the words to the base.

To determine where to place the butterflies, which are popped up and hold the card front in its upright easel position, I set up the easel with the card front where I wanted it. I held it in place until I could set the butterflies in place to hold the front.

And here is the finished card still in the easel position. It does fold flat enough to fit into an envelope. Instead of the butterflies being the stoppers for the easel, you can also use flowers, embellies, jewels, or use foam tape on the sentiment. There are many ways to make this type of card work.

I hope you will give the easel card a go. There are lots of YouTube videos if that’s more your learning style. It looks complicated but it’s easy and sure to impress 🙂