Happy birthday with a concertina step card...

 Yesterday was my lovely granddaughter Polly's 15th birthday. She is such a sweet girl, and I wanted to make her a special card. After roaming around Pinterest for a while, I came across this post featuring a concertina step card. I decided to give it a try.

The front of the card doesn't make a big impact. I just layered a couple of patterned papers onto mats and cut one of my larger tag dies for decoration. I stamped the word "Enjoy" on the tag and lightly inked around the edges. Finally, I popped up a little strip on which I had stamped "today," tied a small bow and adhered a few gems.

When you open the card, this is what you see. It really makes quite a statement. Polly's response was: "Wow, this is an elaborate card!" The die-cut words on each step were actually all connected when I first die-cut them. I simply cut them apart and adhered them as you see in the photo. I think I may have had to die-cut them a couple of times, because in cutting them apart, I sometimes had to cut into connected words.

Here's what it looks like from the side. You can see the concertina effect and how it all folds together when the card is closed.

I used the bottom panel to write a brief message and sign our names. Even though it has a pattern, there was enough white space to make writing on it perfectly legible.

This card took a little extra time but was a lot of fun to make. You may want to give it a try, too!

It is a beautiful summer day in Minnesota today. We had some terrible storms on Sunday night with lots of lightening and rain. Some areas even had large hail--up to baseball size--and 75-100 mph winds, but thankfully not where I live.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.

Cheryl