Hello!
Are you tired of the usual A2 front fold card? Do you want to stretch your card-making muscle and try something new? Does it need to be easy without a lot of measuring?
Enter the easel card.
Easel cards look complicated, but I assure you they’re not. They consist of two pieces of cardstock and two folds. That’s it – just two folds! Here’s a good tutorial – it’s the one I used when I first learned how to do these cards.
Today we’ll focus on the texture and embellishments.
Start building your easel card with the sentiment
I cut the sentiment panel from two sizes of Spellbinders Nestabilities Label 18 and heat embossed the sentiment and stamped frame. Then I inked the edges. And sure enough, the white space to the right bugged me, so I added a pink pearl as a finishing touch.
Unfortunately, it looks a little big to me now, but it looked fine at the time I made the card. Too late, I mailed this baby to its recipient yesterday. Maybe she won’t notice.
I love adding dimensional interest to a card, and this one is loaded with it. From the dry embossed background to the heat embossed label, the stitching around the edges and the flowers and leaves, this card just begs to be touched a little bit. And as a crafter, don’t you find your fingers exploring different textures? I do. From fabric in a store to a painting in an antiques shop, my fingers enjoy the sensation that different surfaces provide.
There’s something a little more authentic about a piece when I touch it. Which might explain why I nearly always include some sort of texture on my cards.
Plenty of room for decoration
One of the reasons I’m so fond of easel cards is because they offer twice the space for adding your personality and creativity. With the standard A2 fold card, you have the one main surface, i.e., the front of the card. With easel cards, you have two! Double the pleasure, double the fun. (Do you remember that slogan?)
You can leave the bottom layer of an easel card fairly plain. Or, as I like to do, you can make it as ornate as the top layer. With the right padding, it won’t be crushed in the mail.
I painted this tiny pink flower with my homemade shimmer paint and attached a few paper leaves underneath.
Give the bottom layer equal attention
Look closely – see the watermark effect under the embellishments? I stamped that layer with Versamark embossing ink and left it to dry. Adds a little more depth to the layer. And the white punched border provides the resist that the top layer needs to create the “easel.”
Typically, there’s not a lot of room for personal messages on an easel card. It’s all behind the punched white border, covered up by the “easel.” So I like to add small tags to say a little more than the few words that area can hold. “Hello” and “big hugs” are always appropriate in my world. I AM a hugger, after all.
If you’d like to see a couple other examples of easel cards, take a look at these. Easel cards don’t have to be square – they can be just about any shape!
Vintage Hope
Easel Drawer Card – a multi-purpose fancy card!
Now it’s your turn. Try your hand at an easel card and share your results in the comments section. We’d love to see your interpretation!
Hugs!
