Earlier in the year I shared the Gatefold Card Design which featured decorative heart cut outs along the middle join. Before I move on to today’s tutorial I’ll just mention that although I made it for Valentines, that card would make a great Mother’s Day Card too. Mum’s can never have to many hearts on their cards. Check it out – perhaps change the heart colours from red to a lovely pastel colour. Just sayin’…LOL
Today, I’m sharing a “how to” for an idea inspired by the above mentioned card, but instead of cutouts I’ve added centre elements which fold back on the card. When the card is closed the two pieces form a whole shape that meet at the card opening.
The Options
Today I’m demonstrating with butterfly wings and I’m using a butterfly shape by Silhouette from my Silhouette library. This easy technique would work with any shape that is fairly symmetrical, you probably have something already in your files. Hearts, Stars, or geometric shapes like Circles or squares would work a treat.
Add as many as you like – Just one or a whole row down the middle. I’m settling for just one.
How to.
- Open up my Free Gatefold Card Cutting File in Silhouette Studio. (Free download available here) Set aside.
- Open the butterfly (or other shape) in Silhouette Studio.
- Ungroup and delete any parts of butterfly design not required.
- Open >Knives > Check “Solid” – and hold down Shift as you cut vertically through your butterfly. Holding shift will ensure a nice straight cut. Normally I would slice down the middle but in this example I want just the wings and not the body so I’m slicing slightly to the right side.
- Delete one side of the shape and and keep the other.
- Select the remaining shape> Replicate > Mirror image. The result is the both the shapes are exactly the same size. This is just in case the design isn’t perfectly symmetrical.
- Optional: Internal offset the shapes. The smaller copies can be cut from contrast materials later and used to decorate the card.
- Position shapes, one on each side of the card along the line edge.
- Select both Shapes >Align Tools > Align Middle
- Then nudge each shape with the keyboard arrow keys so they are just overlapping the card base equally on both sides.
- Select the card and both shapes (but not the fold lines) >Right Click > Weld.
- Add small fold lines where the Butterfly shape meets the card edge
All done!Here’s the card pre decoration
Here it is closed and decorated – I kept the decoration pretty simple.
Let me know if you give this a try. If not, I’d love it if you pinned for later!
Thank you so much for this tutorial. You share your knowledge with all of us, and I appreciate it so much. There is so much to learn.
Thanks for taking the time to comment Sarah. Hope youfind it all useful 🙂
Thanks ever so much for sharing, they are really appreciated