Swing card tutorial

Good morning, this is being scheduled so I am hoping it pops up on Monday morning to tie in with the post over at Prickly Pear Stamps blog here.

I had seen a few of these swing concertina style cards around blogland so decided to have a go for myself and thought I would share my version with you all. Note added: Since I created this card using the Cricut and scheduled this post I found that Sizzix have a new swing card die which makes something very similar.

Basic materials – they will depend on what stamps, dies and colours you choose. I used these Prickly Pear stamps and dies: Lovebird on branch, Large Calla Lily, April Showers, Poinsettia stamp and die, Leaf dies and Fall leaves, Flourish oval nesting die

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 is to make the colours bleed you need to use a medium such as distress ink or watercolour pencils, it’s 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 a 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, continue the same with all four pieces and you will have your completed card.

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 please do mail me.