Brenda's Concertina Style Card Tutorial

Good morning, Benda here with a card idea and tutorial. I had seen a few of these concertina style cards around blogland so decided to have a go for myself and thought I would share my version with you all.

Basic materials – they will depend on what stamps, dies and colours you choose

To start you will need five A4 (similar to foolscap in the States) sheets of reasonable weight cardstock, take four of them to create eight identical shapes with an aperture in the middle. I cut these on my Cricut but you could just as easily cut them with dies.

From the fifth sheet of card cut the hanging central pieces, again you will need two for each section so eight in total. Remember it will need to be a little smaller that the aperture to allow room for it to hang and move. I used my offcuts to cut some leaves and flowers to decorate one hanging section. You also need to cut and score three narrow spines from the offcuts according to the size of your main card base, these will be used to hold the four sections together.

Next stamp four of the eight main sections, or you could cover with Design Papers.

I like to add dimension to my flowers so after colouring with the same distress inks I dab with Versamark and spritz with Glimmer Mist pearl, this makes them very pliable, almost like leather and they can be moulded into shape. As the idea of the ink and mist to make the colours bleed you need to use a medium such as distress ink or watercolour pencils (it won’t work with Copics and similar.)

Once you have stamped and coloured all four of the inner sections lay out all the pieces ready to join up the elements.

Working on one section at a time take the bottom unstamped pieces of both the outer and inner of the card and fix piece of flexible but strong cord down the centre top to bottom. At this point also fix the spine into place, followed by the top stamped sections.

Showing the card building up as you work across the four sections.

Close up of the flower.

This is a real fun card to make, it’s not quick but well worth the time to create something a little bit different. Any questions or problems please do mail me.

Products uses:

GG0186 Lovebird on a Vine
GG0188 Calla Lilies

EE0182 April Showers
D031 Poinsettia Die
CLR037 Fall Leaves Clear Set
D037 Leaf Set Die
D043 Flourished Oval Nesting Die