Stampin’ Up! Tutorial Tuesday: 2 in 1 Tutorial – Stained Glass Technique using Crystal Effects & Acetate Trifold Card

For today’s Stampin’ Up! Tutorial Tuesday, I’m giving you a 2 in 1 tutorial – how to create a stained glass effect using Crystal Effects and an acetate tri-fold card.  Before I get started I did want to point out that neither of these ideas are original to me.  I’m not really sure who came up with the stained glass effect technique, as to the acetate tri-fold, I got the idea from the Hands, Head and Heart  blog, and you can see it HERE. Okay, let’s dive into our tutorial because there are quite a few steps!

Supplies:

• Stamps: Dreams du Jour, Doodle This
• Ink: Baja Breeze, Pacific Point, Kiwi Kiss, Tangerine Tango classic ink refills, Pacific Point Classic ink pad, Black Staz On
• Paper: Baja Breeze, Whisper White CS
• Accessories: palette to mix your ink colors, crystal effects glue, small paintbrush, paper clips (I used them to mix the ink with the crystal effects, brayer, white taffeta ribbon, horizontal slot punch, adhesive , paper snips, bone folder, paper trimmer with scoring and cutting blades, sticky strip, craft & hobby blade and craft mat 

Dimensions:

• Baja Breeze CS 4 1/4" x 11" (scored at 5 1/2" and folded in half to create a standard sized card)
• Baja Breeze CS piece to create the inner frame 4 1/4" x 5 1/2"
• Whisper White CS 4 1/4" x 11" (scored at 5 1/2" and folded in half to create a standard sized card)
• Acetate (transparency) cut to 4 1/8" x 5 3/8"
• 12" piece of white tafetta ribbon 

Step 1: Take your piece of 4 1/4" x 11" piece of Baja Breeze CS which has been scored and folded in half. On the card front, you now want to create a window frame.  To do this, you are going to need a personal paper trimmer with the cutting blade. Cut in 1/2" on all 4 sides of the card front  to create your window- do this slowly and carefully.  Repeat with the 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" piece of Baja Breeze CS.  See the next picture to see the finished "frames".

Step 2: These are all the CS pieces you are going to need, plus your acetate sheet.

Step 3: Take your 4 1/4" x 11" CS which has been scored at 5 1/2" and folded in half, and place it inside the Baja Breeze window card with the fold towards the right side. Take a pencil and make a small light mark using the bottom right corner of the window frame as a guide.  This will be your guide when you are stamping the greeting  to make sure that the greeting is not cut off by the frame of the window (see next picture)

Step 4: Using the pencil mark as your guide, stamp your greeting in black ink onto the white CS.  Note: your fold is still to the right.

Step 5:  Take your 4 1/8" x 5 3/8" piece of acetate.  Stamp your images onto your acetate using Black Staz On ink, being sure to leave the right corner with no stamping so that it doesn’t cover up your greeting!

Step 6: Take your palette (a little tray with wells) and color your crystal effects.  Note: although I am showing you a picture with all the colors mixed at once, when I made the card, I only mixed and colored ONE color at a time.  To do this I took about 2-3 drops of crystal effects, added 1 drop of re-inker, then used a paper clip end to mix it.  I took a small paint brush and painted the color onto the REVERSE side of the acetate (not the side I stamped the staz on onto).  Once I finished painting one color, I rinsed my paint brush well, then mixed up my next color and went to work. Once you’re done, set this aside to dry.  It will take at least an hour.

Tip: Although I dragged my brush with the colored crystal effects on it to paint along the lines of the flourishes, for more open areas, in order to prevent the brush strokes from showing, I picked up little gobs of colored crystal effects and dabbed them on instead, filling up the space.

Step 7:  Not shown in the picture because I forgot to do it, but a critical step: Before lining your frame with sticky strip, when your frame is positioned as shown in the picture below, take your horizontal slot punch and punch a hole on the left side of the frame (center it between the top and bottom of the frame and between the left and right sides of the edge of the frame) – I’ve made a little black oval on the picture to show you where it should be placed. 

Once your hole in punched,  line the window frame with sticky strip – do not cover over the slot with sticky strip.  When you are sticking on your acetate, you want to start by only removing the red backing from the right side, near the fold (you are doing this because the sticky strip is so sticky that if your take off all the red backing pieces at once, and you accidentally attach your acetate in a crooked manner, you will not be able to fix it).  Attach your acetate to that strip first, then carefully peel of the remaining red backings and stick the acetate down the rest of the way. Take your horizontal slot punch, align it with the existing hole and punch a slot through the vellum.  If your slot punch doesn’t work (sometimes punches have a hard time going through acetate), then use your hobby blade ( a craft knife) to cut through the acetate.

Step 8: Here is your acetate attached to the inner side of the window frame. Again, I’ve added a small black oval so you can see where the slot should be punched.  You are now going to line the frame with sticky strip again (on top of the acetate this time – again avoiding covering the slot), and attach your 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" Baja Breeze window frame to the inside.  Before, you actually remove the red backing and stick it down, hold it in place, then take a look at the front of the card and make sure that you are not seeing any of the inner edges of the second frame.  If you do, then you may need to trim it a bit so that it doesn’t show through.  Don’t worry about any small edges of the frame sticking out around the outer edges of the card front, as once it is stuck down, you can take your snips and trim any excess CS.

Step 9: Attach your inner frame to the inside of the card front. Trim any excess edges if necessary. This is what the inside of your card now looks like. Once again, using the existing slot as a guide, take your horizontal slot punch and punch through the inner frame.  The black oval shown in the picture just gives you a visual idea of where it is supposed to be.

Step 10: On the right side of the card, fold your ribbon in half and attach it to the inner card as shown in the picture below.

Step 11: Take your 4 1/4" x 11" piece of white CS which you stamped the greeting on, open it up and stamp on the inside if desired (see next picture).  Attach it (with the fold towards the right) to the inside of your card).

Step 12: This is what the inside of my white piece looks like when it is opened up.

Step 13: Feed one end of the ribbon up through the slot, then tie the ends together in a bow to hold your card shut.

Step 14: You’re done.  The next few pictures show you different views of the stained glass acetate trifold card.

The picture below shows you the card partially open.

The last picture shows you the card fully open.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that my directions made sense – sometimes it’s a lot harder to explain than it is to actually do!