“Book” Card

A book card fold is a fun way to add a lot of interest to your cards.  The cuts and folds take a little patience, but they’re not that difficult to do!  Here’s an example of a book card, and a tutorial for making one yourself!

1.  First, cut two equal size pieces of card stock, each of them should be 6″ x 11″.  These will become your card base and the inside “book” portion.

2.  If you plan to do any background stamping or embossing on the inside piece, do that now.  Once you’ve started to make your cuts and folds, it will be difficult to get even coverage with your stamps.  For embossing, your TIEF won’t be big enough to do the entire paper at once.  You can run it thru twice – the first time thru, make sure you put the right edge of the TIEF folder on the centerline of the card stock – where there will be a fold (to hide the edge that you get when you emboss….). For the second pass, put the LEFT edge of the folder on the centerline.  Be sure to keep everything going the same direction – unless you want one side EM-bossed and the other side DE-Bossed!!

3.  Make your first cuts.  You’ll put your paper into your SU! trimmer and raise and lower the cutting guard to move your cutting blade to the start points of the cuts.

The first cuts are shown in the following picture. Put the card stock into your trimmer and then cut starting at 1 1/2″ from the edge and the top/bottom and running to 1 1/2″ from the other end. The photo also shows the “joint” between the two TIEF-runs.

4.  Next, score the lines that create the “book”.  The next photo shows those – please note this picture shows a mistake (yes, it happens!!). The score lines at 3 1/2″ and 7 1/2″ are only supposed to be between the top of the card stock and the top cut and then again between the bottom of the card stock and the bottom cut. When you make your book card, do it the way it SHOULD be done – don’t be like me, okay!?! 😉

Here’s a list of the distances – all from the left edge of the card stock:

1 1/2″ – This score line runs from cut line to cut line
2 1/4″ – This score line runs from cut line to cut line
3 1/2″ – This score line goes from the top of the card stock to the top cut line and then from the bottom cut line to the bottom of the card stock (NOT how it appears in the photo!)
5 1/2″ – This score line runs all the way from the top of the card stock to the bottom of the card stock
7 1/2″ – This score line goes from the top of the card stock to the top cut line and then from the bottom cut line to the bottom of the card stock (NOT how it appears in the photo!)
8 3/4″ – This score line runs from cut line to cut line
9 1/2″ – This score line runs from cut line to cut line

5.  Fold each of the score lines – folding them either as a “hill” (towards the inside of the card) or a “valley” (away from the inside of the card). Use your bone folder to gently burnish each fold. This picture shows how the hills and valleys work….

Here’s the list of hills and valleys….

1 1/2″ – Valley
2 1/4″ – Hill
5 1/2″ – Hill on the top above the cut line and on the bottom below the cut line. In-between the cut lines, it’s a valley.
8 3/4″ – Hill
9 1/2″ – Valley

6.  The final step of making the book, before you start decorating it, is to glue it to the card base. Use Liquid Multi-Purpose Glue – so you’ll have a few minutes to be sure everything is where you want it. Only glue the ends of the book insert……as you can see here:

7.  Positioned the book insert on the card base – being sure all the ends line up.  Once you’re happy with it, leave it set for a minute or two, and then decorate your masterpiece!!

If you’re interested in card cut sizes for the inside decorated areas, here they are:

3 1/8″ x 2 7/8″ (two pieces for the inside mats)

2 3/4″ x 3″ (two pieces for the inside art pieces)

8.  Finally, this makes a 6″ x 6″ card.  To make an envelope, you’ll need a 9 3/4″ x 9 3/4″ piece of Envelope Paper and your Envelope Punch Board.  This will make a good side envelope to accommodate the thicker card.

Have fun with it!

Here’s an idea for decorating your book card:

And here’s a blog post showing the full process for the card in the tutorial!  Click the picture to go direct!