Cascading Z Fold Tutorial and a sneak peek!

Hello my friends! I hope you are all doing well!  Thank you so much to those of you who prayed for my granddaughter!  It took several days, but she is now feeling fine again. Praise the Lord!  We had a great time together at our house for 10 days, and now I am at her house, helping her Mom and Dad pack to move July 2!  Never a dull moment, right?  LOL!  It's all good!!!

I also wanted to thank everyone who took my survey!  The results, while pretty much as I expected, did give me a few ideas of things to work on.  One request was for video tutorials, and I don't have a video camera so I can't really do anything about that right now.  Two others were for more no brainer cards.  I have been trying to do that lately... simplifying and making cards that are easier to mail... however I will continue to try to add more in.  If you've followed me for long... you know my style.  It's not so loaded up with stuff that you can't find the stamps... but it's also not clean and simple.  LOL!  I'd say simply elegant is my comfort zone, but I have been trying to do more CAS designs so I will strive to add more of those in to the mix!  It seems split down the middle whether you prefer full posts in the email or links to my blog so that was interesting!  The reason I like you to come to the blog is because while here you might see something else that interests you, or links to others who also might inspire you.... and of course... we ALL love comments that let us know you were here!  It can take a lot of time to write posts, especially with tutorials, and it's just nice to hear from you in the form of a comment.  I plan to leave it at the full post for now and we'll see how that goes.  The other request was for a few more tutorials.  With that said... today I have a mini tutorial for you... just a simple diagram I drew to show you how to make the fold for this card.  I hope you enjoy it!

Today's card is also  a sneak peek for you at some  fun new sets coming to you from  Our Daily Bread designs July 1!  I prepared a little tutorial sheet for you to see how to make this easy card, which I'm calling a Cascading Z Fold card.  I adapted the measurements to work best with the sizes of these awesome new banners being released July 1.

First.... a few details about what I used.  As you no doubt have noticed, pennants are all the rage right now... so keeping right on trend, ODBD has an awesome release of versatile and fun pennants coming your way!

I used a soon to release set called Pennant Row Banner, and an ODBD Custom Pennant Row Die set to create my banners.  I also used  past releases, To The Love Birds, ODBD Custom Bird Cage and Banners Die, ODBD Custom Fancy Foliage Dies, and the gorgeous designer paper from the Blushing Rose Paper Collection. 

Here is a chart I drew up to show you how to cut your paper, and where to score and fold.

Cut 12" card stock to 5 1/2"

Score at 4" and 8"

Mark a point on left side at 1 13/16" high

Draw line from top right corner of middle panel to this point abd cut

Fold on scored lines

How easy is that?!!!

So I used 12" Bazzill for my base, and decorated each panel with the ODBD Blushing Rose Paper Collection, sponging with distress ink on all layers.  I stamped the birdcage image from To The Love Birds with VersaMark on Acetate, and heat embossed with Medieval Metal embossing powder.  I used the Custom Bird Cage Die to cut it out.  I adhered that on the designer paper just offset a bit from the matching image on the designer paper itself to give depth and added interest without covering up the gorgeous paper.  I also embossed three birds the same way and cut them out with the custom dies, setting aside until my card was ready to be decorated.  I then cut three scalloped pennant rows from my Bazzill card stock as mats, and I stamped three of the different words from the Pennant Row Banner set with Blushing Bride ink, and cut them out with the custom dies.  I adhered them to the mats, and for the middle banner that says "inspire" I took little tucks between each letter to slightly shorten the total span of the row.  I decorated with pearls, the embossed birds I had cut out, a little May Arts lacey ribbon,  and a silk rose I air brushed with a pink marker to match the pinks in the paper, as well as some pretty flourishes from the ODBD Fancy Foliage Die set. 

Here is a photo of the little tucks I took for the middle banner to be sure it would fit within the folds on both sides of the card, without affecting the flags themselves.  I added the pearls to cover, but as you can see in this picture, you really don't need to.  I think the tucks look pretty cool and give some extra dimension to the banner.  In the photo below, don't confuse the scalloped ridges with the tucks.  The tucks are just in between each flag... the rest of the dimension you see is just the scalloped pennant row behind the lettered one.

 I shortened one banner word from "Blessed" to "Bless". You might ask me why did I do that?  Well...I wanted it to be a verb... an action word like the other two.  As I was making the card, I perceived it as being read from the front to the back, or in this case from the bottom to the top... so I was thinking... this is what we as card makers do! We believe in something... we inspire others as we create, and we bless others as we give.   Taking that idea even further...as Christians.... our faith often is the motivator behind our cards.  So I started with believe!  Personally, my belief in Jesus Christ as my Savior and only way to be redeemed to a Holy God IS my belief and my reason for doing what I do.  I then want to move on to the next step in my journey... to inspire others... whether that be creatively or spiritually or in some other way!  Finally... it's my prayer that my cards bless the recipients and even those of you who so faithfully stop by to view them here on my blog.

Here's a few more views:

And closed... it folds totally flat unless you have 3-D flowers or embellishments that are thicker.

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial for a different fold that in my opinion is just MADE for rows of pennants!  :)

I so welcome and appreciate your comments!  They mean more to me and bless me more than you know!

I hope to see you back on July 1 for the release!

Blessings,