Featuring products from the Kristina Werner line at Concord & 9th.

When I saw the stencils in the October collection I had an idea to combine those with some of the products from the previous release, and made a collection of gift!

Approach:

• I had an idea for a stack of gifts that make up the card front and feature the bow dies, but I love to find a way to do more than a standard flat card fold when I can. I built this so the presents open out in layers.

• I considered adding a greeting on the front of the card, but because it is obvious that it opens in layers, I liked the idea of having to interact with it to find that. (Just like opening a gift to see what’s inside.)

Techniques:

• Creating layers of gifts is easy, because they can be simple rectangles.

• As always with a unique interactive card, I first did a sketch and then cut the pieces out of scrap paper to figure out my dimensions. I made sure that the sentiment gift inside was going to be covered by the other folding gift panels, so it is a surprise when the card is opened.

• The Sprout (light green) card base is a standard A2 panel, but I cut the front panel to be more narrow. (I cut 1.25” off the right side so it is only 3” wide.) I cut a 3” x 5 1/2” piece of Parsley cardstock to create the gift that I would add to the front of it.

• The Sweet Pea (pink) gift is 3” wide x 3 5/8” high, but I cut the piece to be 4” wide so I could fold the right side an inch around the back to attach it.

• Each “gift” shows off a different stencil. Most of them were done with the same color ink as the cardstock. I didn’t need a bold pattern, so that was perfect.

  • The Parsley (darker green) one uses 3 of the Layered Plaid stencils. I rotated them at an angle for interest.

  • The Sweet Pea gift uses one small section of one of the Festive Fun Pattern stencils, repeated twice to be on both sides of the ribbon.

  • On the Sprout (inside card panel) I used one of the Berries and Leaves stencils.

• To vary the interest of the bows, and to play with some of the ways it can be used, I used different combinations of the bow die cuts on each gift. Two use glitter paper as accent.
  

Colors:

I chose two main colors for this card - the pink and green, with white as an accent. To create three gifts with variety (which actually ended up being four including the greeting inside), I chose a lighter (Sprout) and a mid-range (Parsley) green, and a mid-range pink (Sweet Pea) that worked well with them.

Knowing I wanted to do a unique pattern on each of them, I knew keeping the palette limited and doing the patterns in subtle light/dark variations would work best to keep the card interesting, but not busy. The bow and ribbon details were all done within the same color family as the gift they are on, just in a lighter or darker variation.

• cardstock: Concord & 9th Dragonfruit, Sweet Pea, Sprout, Parsley, Juniper, White Glitter. Neenah.

• ink: Concord & 9th Sweet Pea, Sprout, Parsley

Thank you for visiting! I hope you get some time to create something soon.

Links are below if you’re interested in any of the products I used.
If you’re interested in a cutting guide with dimensions for the layers, let me know. I’ve considered adding that to posts, but not sure if there is enough interest. I’m always open to feedback!

(Listed by company, with links to Simon Says Stamp and others. Simon Says Stamp links are affiliate links*.)

*Affiliate links do not cost you any more when you shop, but it is beneficial to creators when you use them, so thanks in advance!