Good morning all! I promised a tutorial on how to create the waterfall card and here it is!

Your card base is 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ — score it at 4 1/4″ on the 8 1/2″ side. Next, I layered a Very Vanilla c/s piece (5 3/8″ x 4 1/8″) under a DSP piece of your choice (5 1/4″ x 4″, Sweet Shoppe Specialty DSP is pictured, available in the spring mini catalog).

You can attach your DSP piece to the matted 5 3/8″ x 4 1/8″ piece — *don’t attach to your card base yet since you don’t want to see your brads or eyelet on the inside of the card!

I then cut several c/s pieces of the same solid color — (4) 2″ squares, a 9″ x 2″ strip, and a 4 1/4″ x 1 1/4″ strip.

The reason I chose a width of 4 1/4″ x 1 1/4″ is because I chose to emboss my strip with the new heart embossing folder from the Adorning Accents Textured Impressions Embossing Folder set — if you wanted to, I suppose your width could be wider or narrower, but not by much! If you’re going to emboss the strip, now’s the time to do it, using your Big Shot and the Tab 2 platform with the Embossing Folder. (I didn’t show a photo of this step.)

You will score your 9″ x 2″ strip at 2″, 2 3/4″, 3 1/2″, and 4 1/4″ (in other words, every 3/4 inch from 2″ to 4 1/4″)

Your final preparation is to cut (4) 1 7/8″ squares in a neutral color and stamp them with the image of your choice. My Valentine card used the P.S. I Love You stamp set, and I used a combination of the Party Hearty and Sprinkled Expressions (SAB set only!) stamp sets for my birthday card in Wisteria Wonder.

After you have stamped your 4 neutral c/s squares, you can mat them on the 2″ solid color c/s squares.

Next, attach a piece of sticky strip to the “wrong” side of your 9″ x 2″ strip : in other words, when you score a piece of paper (as I tell my class members — “monkey in the middle … mountain in the middle … fold into the “bump” of the c/s, opposite of what you would think when folding your paper) the indentations are facing up, your sticky strip is attached under the piece of paper that is a 2″ square of your 9″ x 2″ strip (you’ll see that you have a side that is a 2″ square and the other side is going to have a remainder of 4 3/4″. The sticky goes under the 2″ square.

Your next step, before you attach your 9″ strip, is to figure out where your 4 1/4″ x 1 3/4″ strip is going to attach to your card front. I placed my embossed c/s strip about 3/4″ to 1″ from the bottom of the card. If it’s too high up, your waterfall is going to stick up over the top of your card and won’t fit in the envelope. Too far down? Same problem — your “pull ribbon” will stick out too much from the bottom and won’t fit either! What I do to figure this placement out is fold my 9″ strip on the score lines, and hold my strip where it will attach to the embossed strip. Your attachment will be at the very bottom of the strip, with the sticky facing down. This is what makes your 2″ squares “fall” as they do. Check the photo for further explanation.

After you’ve figured out the placement of the embossed strip near the bottom of the card — use your cropadile (or a punch or your mat pack) to punch a single hole on each side of the strip near the outside of the card front. Make sure that your hole stays on the card front!! You can choose to use brads or eyelets — I chose glimmer brads on one sample, and rhinestone brads on another.

Now you can attach your 4 squares. Figure out how you want them to lay. Your primary image that you want to show on the top of your waterfall needs to be on the bottom of the pile. Start adhering your chosen “bottom waterfall image” — the images are already adhered to the 2″ square and you will see that the first one will fit perfectly into your scored 2″ square on the strip. Take your next image and attach sticky strip (works a bit better than snail since you don’t want to worry about it falling off) to the 3/4″ strip directly above your attached first 2″ square. Do this for the remaining 2 squares as well.

Now you’re ready to punch a hole in the strip that’s not attached to the card — this is your pull tab. You don’t want to yank on the ribbon if you’re pulling it through — it will come right through if you’re too rough — attaching a piece of c/s over that doesn’t work too well since it won’t slide as smoothly, so please be careful!

Your final step is to attach your card front to your card base! Test your card and see how cool it is! So much fun and a great wow card for your special someone!

Thanks for visiting again today! Until next time (which might be a day or two as I’m working overnight as a nurse all weekend!) …

Jeannie