Magic Card

This is truly a magic card; well, at least to me. I had a hard time mailing this birthday card off to my grandson because I was having so much fun playing with it. It looks so complicated, but I couldn't believe how easy it was to make. Another thing I liked about it is that it feels substantial and the panels lay flat so nicely.

The base will take you less than 5 minutes to make. However, depending upon what you do for the panels you'll be adding quite some time to that.

Here's a quick video of this interactive card.

 

And, here are some stills of each panel. This panel opens like a gatefold card, vertically.

To reveal the third panel, open this one horizontally, like a sideways gatefold.

This third page opens vertically once again. The upper and lower center rectangles on this third panel will show on the fourth panel as well.

And then this fourth panel will open horizontally yet again, to reveal the front of the card.

The paper I used for the panels is digi paper by Carte Bella called Space Academy. My grandboy loves planets and space, so I carried the theme throughout. As fast as the base was to make, the panels were intensive mainly because I altered them a bit to fit the designated spots and personalized some of them as well. For example, on the third page I put said grandson's photo in the spaceman suit in the upper right small square.

The base of the card is made with four 3"x6" pieces of cardstock.  For this card, I used 6 of the large squares. Normally there would be eight, but I wanted to do the wording on pages 3 and 4 to be separate from the center photo. If  you use 8, you'd need to realize that the top and bottom half of the page 3 squares will also show 4th page. Then, there are 24 of the very small ones. Again, there are places where these small ones could be replaced with the rectangular pieces. You'll be able to decide that as you start adding your panels.

And, finally, I made an envelope that I customized from the digi paper. The pattern for the envelope is from SVG Cuts, and I cut it using my Sizzix Eclips 2 electronic cutting machine.

And, here's my grandboy in his birthday gift (he's way into dress-up). After he opened his card, and before he opened his spacesuit, he said, "Maybe I will be an astronaut for Halloween next year." His mom and I agreed that it could be a possibility. Needless to say, he loves it.

Hope you enjoyed my card. You can find patterns with sizing on youtube. I've seen it called the Never Ending Card as well, so you may find something by searching that. Happy crafting!

To Infinity and Beyond!