Hey, y’all! Have you played with your April Kits yet? Are they fabulous or what!?!? I absolutely love the “Happiness” line from LemonCraft found in this month’s Cards, Tags, & More Kit – so bright and cheery – perfect for your spring projects!

To kick off my April projects, I have a couple of easel cards for you! One is a 6”x6” “Thank You” card and one is a slimline “Happy Easter” card I created using a few pieces of Tres Jolie Chipboard from my stash, in addition to the Happiness papers! I used cardstock from my stash, and on the Easter card I added a little of the “Fairy Wings” paint from this month’s Mixed Media Kit, but all of the patterned papers, flowers, and fussy-cut bits and pieces are from the kit!

Make sure you check out my video to see how I put these together!

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After I picked out the cardstock I wanted to use, I got started constructing my card base. The green cardstock isn’t heavy cardstock, I’d say it’s an average weight – about 65 lbs I think – but the “Natural” cover stock is much heavier – 130 lbs! You don’t need to use 130lb cover stock, but I love how sturdy it makes cards, so I keep it on hand! Since this card lies flat and the easels stand, you could easily use “regular” cardstock or patterned paper for your layers.

To try and make sure I am explaining my measurements as clearly as possible, I have some photos of the various pieces with their measurements! (Taking a snapshot of a video frame does come in handy sometimes!!)

This first set of photos shows the measurements for the 6”x6” card and the four easels that are on it. I cut the green cardstock in half, making a 6”x12” rectangle, then folded it in half along the long edge, easy-peasy! (My card is a top fold card, but you can have your fold wherever you want!) Then I cut two 5-3/4” squares out of my cover stock and glued them inside the base for the message to be written on, and on the front to add some contrast between the base and the easels.

For the easels, I cut four 5”x2-1/2” rectangles and folded them in half – these are the easel bases – and I cut four 2-1/2” squares to use as the easel fronts.

All four of my easels have the fold at the top so they all stand up in the same direction – and to make the easel-making process a little easier to explain! With the fold at the top, you are going to want to fold the top flap of your easel in half along the diagonal – from one of the corners at the fold to one of the bottom corners. I have my easels set to face the outer edges, so I folded two from the top right to the bottom left, and two from the top left to the bottom right. (In the two photos showing the folds, I only used a scrap of the cover stock for visual purposes – so you could see easier than me trying to show green on green!)

Once your easels are folded how you want them, all that is left to do is add the 2-1/2” squares that make up the easel fronts. You don’t want to glue them all the way down, only to the bottom triangle of your folded cardstock – this is the whole easel – the part that will stand up to be shown off!

You can see in the next pictures that I made sure my easels were all facing how I wanted them before gluing them down to the card front!

With the four easels glued down, all that I had left to do was pick out which patterned papers and fussy-cut pieces I wanted to use to decorate with.

In total, I cut eight 2-1/4” squares from two different patterned papers. I used the paper with the larger print to cover the section that will be seen while the easels are standing, and I used the paper with the smaller print on the easel faces so it wouldn’t be too overpowering when I came back and added the fussy cut flowers.

For the four squares with the larger pattern, I used an acrylic square to help me make sure the pattern I wanted would be showing!

Once all of the “main” pieces were in place, it was just a matter of adding the final decorations and the sentiment.

To add a little dimension and contrast to the fussy cut pieces, I lightly inked the edges using the “Bamboo Leaves” ink from the kit, glued a few of the flowers together, then popped up the little collage pieces on some foam squares.

For my easel “stoppers,” I picked out four of the smaller, fussy-cut butterflies, backed them with some double-sided adhesive foam, cut off the excess foam, and topped them with some Diamond Glaze – in essence, I created custom “enamel dots” using the papers from the kit! Once the Diamond Glaze had dried completely, I stuck the butterflies down where I wanted the easels held.

Finally, it was time to add my sentiment! All I did is pick out the stamp I wanted to use from the set in the kit, ink it up, and stamp it to a couple of the small cut of pieces from the papers I had already used!

Then, to soften it up, I created a watered-down “puddle” of the “Bamboo Leaves” ink on my craft mat and used a water brush with the puddle of ink to lightly trace over the stamping. I fussy cut the sentiment out, added some foam to the back of the words, and then added the words to the top-right square.

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Now on to the slimline Easter card! The building process for easel cards is – more or less – the same. It is really only a matter of which way you are going to have your easels facing! And, for this card, since I have my easels facing forward, I didn’t even have to make diagonal folds!

For my card base, I used the 130lb cover stock, cut it down to 8”x9-1/4”, and folded it in half along the shorter edge, to create a 4”x9-1/4” card. Then for some layering, I cut a 3-3/4”x9” rectangle from green cardstock to start building my card face.

For my three easels, I cut three 6”x2-1/4” rectangles to use as the bases and folded them in half along the long edge – making them 3”x2-1/4”.  I also added a score line and folded them at 1-1/2” to create the easel. Then, for the easel faces, I cut three 3”x2-1/4” rectangles.

I have the folds (at the 3” mark) for my easel at the top, and I added glue to the bottom rectangle that was created with the second fold at the 1-1/2” mark to attach my easel faces.

To keep my three easels as centered as possible, I used a 3/4” wide strip of paper as a spacer along the edge of the green cardstock on the card base and lined my easels up along that strip. My easels are “on top of” each other – in other words, I didn’t add any horizontal space between the bottom of one easel and the top of the easel under it.

Just because the patterned paper in the kit is an 8”x8” pad, doesn’t mean it can’t fit on a card that has a 9” tall face! After all, the diagonal of a square is longer than the two sides! In this case, from one corner to the opposite corner, it is a little over 11-1/4”, and since I didn’t need very wide strips – only 5/8” – everything fit just fine on the edge of the card front.

I had very minimal paper piecing required to get the front finished – only having to piece the background of the center easel together to get the “boards” how I wanted them.

I picked out the patterned papers I wanted to use to back my Tres Jolie Easter Egg Chipboard with and to use under the easels, backed the chipboard with the paper and trimmed the excess from the edges off, and cut the three pieces that will show when the easels are standing down to size!

I didn’t want too much decoration on the chipboard, so I just used the “Bamboo Leaves” ink and some water to add a bit of color to the eggs. Once I had the ink on, I decided I wanted to add a little something extra to the “Happy Easter” easel, so I gave a light brushing of the “Fairy Wings” paint (found in this month’s Mixed Media Kit) to the sentiment and popped on a few of the green flowers from the kit.

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Thank you for joining me here on the blog today! I hope you enjoyed these two easel cards and they gave you some ideas of what you can make using this month’s Cards, Tags, & More Kit!

Stay Crafty, Friends

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In addition to the April 2023 Cards, Tags, & More Kit (and a little of the paint from the Mixed Media Kit!), I used (from previous Tres Jolie Kits):

Tres Jolie “Easter Egg Set” Chipboard, Bazzill “Apple Crush” Cardstock, Core’dinations “Kiwi” Cardstock, Marco’s Papers “Natural” Cover Stock, Scotch ATG, Art Glitter Glue, Jacquard Gum Arabic, JudiKins Diamond Glaze, Double-sided foam, Prima Water Brush