Club Scrap Watercolor Christmas Blog Hop

Welcome to the Club Scrap Watercolor Christmas Blog Hop featuring art work from Smarup Murthy at The Storyteller.  To return to the start of the blog hop link here.

Today I made an accordion card using the Club Scrap Watercolor Christmas Greetings to Go kit. The kit will make three of these cards, just add your pictures. I think I'll use mine for post Christmas brag books to send to grandparents or family members far away.

Accordion Card Front - Closed

Accordion Card Front - Open

This has ten 5x7 pages, four with pockets, to hold your favorite pictures. To make it you'll need a Club Scrap Watercolor Christmas Greetings to Go kit, paper trimmer, adhesive, a scoring tool, and an optional corner rounder. For a complete tutorial see the end of this post that includes pictures of each two page spread.

Front side showing three - 2 page spreads for pictures

Backside showing two - 2 page spreads for pictures

Thank you for coming to my page to a different ways to use Smarup's beautiful artwork from the card kit.  The accordion card tutorial is below.  To go to the start of the hop link here. You next stop is with Jen at Scrap Happy Sisters Ink. As always your comments are greatly appreciated.


Happy Crafting,

Debby

Watercolor Christmas Greetings to Go

Accordion Card Tutorial

Start making your accordion card by separating the Greetings to Go kit into three equal sets each with 4 sheets of 10 x 7 white card bases, 4 envelopes, 4 black mats, 2 green mats, 2 red mats, and one cut apart sheet. Trim the cut aparts using the marks given.

For the card base you need to score one 10 x 7 card base at 5 inches, score two 10 x 7 card bases at 1/2 inch and 5 1/2 inch.  Fold the score lines and bend each 1/2 inch tab back to create a z fold.

Three Card Bases - Scored with adhesive on the tab

Line up the scored pages so the short page (4 1/2 x 7) is face up and the tabs are toward center 5 x 7 single folded card. The single fold card can be trimmed slightly (1/16th inch) to make sure the card folds are even once the tabs are attached. Attached the tabs to the center single fold card.

Connect Card Base - Short sides at front and back.

On the card front mount a red mat and the inside square greeting. Make the belly band by trimming the remaining 10 x 7 white based to 1 1/2 inch by 10 inches.  Score at 2, 2 1/8, 2 1/4, 2 3/8, 2 1/2 from each side.  Trim a black mat to 4 x 3 1/2. Mount a vertical cut apart on the trimmed mat.

Front Prior to Belly band closure

Add adhesive on the band edge wrapping loosely around the card front, you'll want the band to still slide off easily once you've filled it with pictures. The band is score to allow a 1/2 inch thick card once filled. Attached the prepared cut apart to the belly band making sure to center it on the lower part of the red panel. This means the band will be off center as shown below.  Finally add the greeting to the red mat so it shows above the band. 

Belly band closed

Belly band removed

Two different types of pockets were applied to some pages: a half pocket page and an envelope pocket page. 

Back pages 7 & 8 with a half pocket

Front pages 3 & 4 with an envelope pocket

For the half pocket page a black mat is trimmed to 4 1/2 inch x 3 1/2 inch and mounted on the top half of a page.  Then a horizontal cut apart is scored at 3/8 inch from each short end and adhesive applied. Use glue on the bottom of the cut apart to close it. Make 2

Cut Apart Half Pocket tabs

Front pages 1 & 2 with a half pocket

For the envelope pocket page seal an envelope with adhesive. Then trim to 4 1/4 inch x 6 1/4 inch by only trimming two sides to form a pocket.  I chose to ink the edge lightly with black before applying it to the page. Then add a green mat. Make 2.

Trimmed envelope pocket

Back pages 9 & 10 with an envelope pocket

Use your remaining pieces to decorate the back and other pages as shown.  The remaining white card base measuring 10 x 5 1/2 was cut into three mats for the pockets. 

Back decorations

Front pages 5 & 6 with diagonal mats

Finally add your pictures and any other embellishments for a quick brag book. I suggest using a larger envelope or padded mailer due to the thickness.