CottageCutz: Nativity Easel Card

Hi, Lois here with another fun project. Even though Christmas is just a few weeks away, I'm still making Christmas cards. As you probably are aware, I like to make fun-fold cards. A particularly easy one is an easel card, and I have just that for you today.

I wanted to use navy as the card base, but I don't have any heavyweight navy cardstock; so I used heavyweight white as the base and just used the navy as a mat layer behind this really pretty marbleized pattern paper. I cut two pieces of white -- 4 1/4" x 8 1/2" and 4 1/4" x 4 1/4"; two pieces of navy - 4" x 4"; and two pieces of patterned paper 3 7/8" x 3 7/8".

I scored the larger white piece on the long edge at 2 1/8" and 4 1/4" . . .

. . . and folded on the score lines.

I then layered the two square panels -- one with white/navy/patterned paper and the other with just the navy/patterned paper.

It's important to use a strong adhesive to hold this panel onto the easel, so I placed three strips of Scor-Tape on the final small section of the easel . . .

. . . and adhered the square front panel. The other square panel is adhered to the inside.

I then cut my die-cuts from navy, silver and a scrap of red. You'll notice that I cut several layers of the sentiment. As the sentiment is going to act as the "bumper" for my easel, it needed to be thick. The navy cardstock is quite thin (65#), and I actually have five layers there -- two of the Merry Christmas sentiments are double thickness.

Using a fine-tip bottle of liquid glue, I adhered the Nativity scene, bells and bows to the front of the card. As you can see, I cut down the "hangers" for the bells.

After gluing all the layers of Merry Christmas together, I glued the sentiment to the inside. Just an FYI, the die I used for this sentiment actually says "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," but I cut out just the "Merry Christmas" portion.