Curvy die cards

While scrolling through Pinterest and seeing some alcohol ink background cards, a totally unrelated card idea came to mind – to use some curvy dies and Ink Drops papers from Craft Consortium to make a clean and simple card. To say I’m in love with the results would be an understatement – it’s such a versatile and simple design that has a totally different look depending on the choice of cardstock and papers used. I see many of these in my future, and it’s a perfect way to use up some larger paper scraps!

I’ve also created a quick visual tutorial of how I created the cardfront panels, as I’ve had a few people ask how to do these. I hope this is helpful 🙂

 

How to create the card front

Supplies needed:

• Cardstock for the curved layers – I used white in this example
• Card base – I’m using a US A2 card size
• Patterned paper or previously created background – I’m using a paper from the Ink Drops – Dusk paper pad by Craft Consortium
• Curvy die of your choice – I’m using ‘Quite Curvy’ dies by Stampin’ Up! (retired)

Take your piece of cardstock cut to the size of the card front. Place your curvy die in the location where you want the bottom curve to be on your card. In my case I like the curved panel to sit approx 1/3 from the bottom of the card so that’s where I placed my die. I don’t measure at all, just eyeball where I think the die should sit.

Do the same thing with your top curve. I decided I like to have the curves with a bit more ‘movement’ so I flipped my curvy die around so the curve went in the opposite direction at the top – that gave me a mix of wide and narrow parts on the card. You can also keep the die the same way for both cuts and it’ll just give a more consistent wave across the card front. Once again I decided I like my card to have a wider margin of open space towards the top of the card, so I kept the top space a bit larger than the bottom – but there are no rules to the width to use.

Next I took my card base and placed the two die cuts in place – I measured between the width between the top of the die cut spaces to below the bottom of the die cut spaces (make sure to allow for the holes). This is how to work out the height of the paper needed to fill the space. In this example I was able to use a piece of patterned paper 2.5″ high.

After I cut my strip of patterned paper I placed that on the card front. I overlaid the die cut pieces on top so I can be sure that the paper will sit behind the open spaces. Sometimes you need to move the paper around a bit to get the placement right.

Once I’m happy I keep one hand on the paper piece while I move the die cuts out of the way, and I put a small pencil mark at the bottom of the paper strip so I know where to line it up.

Use your adhesive of choice to glue the paper strip to the card base, using the pencil mark as a guide for the bottom edge of the strip.

Glue your bottom die cut in place on top of the card base, aligning the bottom and sides with the card base.

Do the same with the remaining die cut panel at the top of the card front. Then embellish it as you want.

I hope that all makes sense – but if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try to answer.