 Hi everybody it's Sam at Mixed Up Craft thank you for watching my tutorial today I'm going to show you how to make this beautiful easel step swing floating card. It's a few cards in one really, you've got the step element, you've got the easel card and then you've got this floating element here. Now this one does fold flat and I recommend that you fold it flat this way so that then when the person opens it it kind of already goes into that shape and everything, your folds all kind of stay nice and crisp whereas I've seen a lot of them are just like this and obviously once that's been in an envelope for a while those score lines are not going to be as sharp as you would like them to be so I'm going to be sending mine off like this. Now these ones are for Mother's Day but of course you can have it for any occasion that you like you can see there they stand really nicely and you've got all the space on the back of this swing piece here to write your message so let me show you how to make it. So this is a simplified version so I actually was requested to do this tutorial by about seven different people over on the request section on my blog had a little look into it and I saw a tutorial by Debbie Henderson and when I'd looked at a lot of this card style on Pinterest and things like that just to see if there was a more simplified way to do it and this is what I've come up with here so you want a piece of you know I'm doing a six by six version so this is 12 by six and along the 12 inch side you want to score it six inches then what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut a square into this left-hand side here so this one here is about four by four but it's four and one eighth by four and one eighth but four by four will be fine and that will give you a one inch side on all four sides there so I'm going to just lay this one here, tack it in place, if you don't have a die cutting machine you could draw around something that's square and then just cut it out or you might have you know your trimmers you can cut a square four by four square in the middle and but by just die cutting straight in here I just already thought that that was a bit easy and most people you know watch my tutorials will have a square die and a die cutting machine so I'm just going to run this one through now okay so you can see that's come away perfectly and you could use this piece now for the piece that's going to be floating but because I wanted to get as much prepped before the tutorial I've already got mine ready but keep that piece and you can use it for the middle part so now that's all cut we're going to do some scoring so pop it back into your scoreboard with this side on the left-hand side and you're going to score it one and a half just keep your stylus in the track until you get down to the other end okay and then at two again all the way down and then it's three and a half all the way down now I have changed those scorelines slightly from the live I wanted it to have more height at the front so I've added an extra half inch to the front here so anybody that's watching and on the live that's what I've changed there now we can fold and burnish the scoreline so you're going to fold your main six inch scoreline there in half so that's you know your card blank there then that next scoreline you want to become a mountain like so okay and then a valley and then the front one will become a mountain I'm just going to flip that over there just so I can get some nice burnish lines there and there is the card shape okay you'll see now once we add our mats and layers bring up on the side there that's the shape that you should have next if you want to do some die-cutting with this front piece here then I've pulled out my box number 15 by the papercraft society or kit 15 and that's what I've used to decorate all of this now I believe the day this tutorial goes up they have an offer on the papercraft society kits will link the kits below because if you are someone that's watching my tutorials and you enjoy the kits and you've been unsure whether to get one or not then today might be a good day to check them out again I don't know how long the offers running so if you're watching this some months later but then I imagine it will be gone and it will be whilst stocks last but you might be able to get yourself a bargain in this kit there is this lovely edge die here now it's not wide enough to cover the whole width and during the live and I was like oh I really want to use it so I ended up just adding a little curve to the end and that's what a lot of other people did as well so I'm going to use that one there and I've got myself here this yellow cardstock and I want this to become the mat layer here so you'll see I've got this lovely gingham if you don't want to do an edge you might have a straight edge rather than a curved edge but we're just like a nice scallop detail or you know a different design altogether or you just keep it completely normal you know as it is it will look lovely with some nice mats and layers built up but I do just want to add a little bit more this is going to be for Mother's Day so I'm going to go quite over the top so it's a six inch width card so I'm going to bring this down to five and three quarters I'm just going to cut that it's just piece from my scrap and this is going to sit over here so you'll see already I've got a nice border either side but what I want to do first of all is just I'm only going to die cut so I'm only going to run this half through I mean if you don't want to burnish your score lines yet then wait till you add this piece in and I'm going to line up that middle scallop roughly so it's in the middle of the card right up as close to the end as I can get it and I can just see I've got about the same either side there so I'm going to pop this there I'm just going to run just this piece through the die machine then run it back and then reverse it back out again you see now I've got this shape and then all I did was just the die to lay it down and I just drew around it I'm going to sit it there just to get the same kind of curve and this was just you know a good way to just show you how you can extend you know some of the edge dies to fit you know bigger cards again just like so and then I'm just going to you could just cut it straight as well you don't have to extend the the shape of the the curve there but I did think it was quite nice okay so that's done then with this one I'm going to lay the die again right at the end just making sure I've got an equal amount it'd be slightly less each side now because this is slightly not you know slightly thinner it's not as wide and again just going to die cut that end just use that die just to draw around the sides here okay next I'm just going to open up the card and I'm going to lay this down I'm just going to bring it down until I get a nice white border that I'm going to bring up a little bit higher and then I'm just going to mark with my pencil about a quarter of an inch up from that score line I'm just going to cut that okay so that's that piece and because it's plain I'm going to use this embossing folder just to add a little bit of texture and I'm going to use some of my bar cool paste over the top of this as well so now I'm just going to run this through my machine this is the X cut wicker design okay so that's that one all done let's get this out of the way and now I'm going to stick this one down onto the base there so that will start to strengthen that that's that all done next I've got this piece of acetate and the acetate comes in the kit as well and this is one and a half by just under the width of the card here so this is six inches so I've done this to five and seven eight just so you don't have anything poking out the sides and you'll see I've added double-sided tape here now this doesn't have to be acetate either this could be cardstock but if you want to have that floating look then use the acetate because then you can't see it I've just added some tape to the front ends here so I'm going to stick that down first just on the front just on the end pieces and you're going to turn this over you're going to butt it right up to the score line here but it's going to stick onto the these this front piece here that's what you're sticking it on to but I'm leaning it against the back piece first just to get it in place so I just want to make sure I've got it in the middle there and then I'm just going to pinch over get it right up the top there and that will help balance the card okay so you'll see what we've got there and then I've cut this piece here which I've also already embossed and this one here measures three and three-quarters squared so I'm going to take the tape off of the front and then if you open up the card lay it all down completely flat this piece you want to sit perfectly in that square so you've got an even border I think that's about right and now just reinforce those score lines again now when you bring this up once we add our stopper this piece will kind of just float there just it just stays where it needs to be so I'm now going to flip this over and I've cut the same piece again the same size three and three-quarters and then I put a matte layer on there which is three and a half by three and a half in the yellow and then I've got three and a quarter by three and a quarter again in white so you can write your message and I'm just going to sit this perfectly over the top like so and it'll stick to that you could put more glue on there if you want but I think that's enough but now again once the stoppers in place you can see how that all looks so now that's all left for me to do is add the stopper and decorate so I've already got my stopper ready here and I've put some foam on the back and this one just says happy Mother's Day so now you just want to kind of bring this up as far as you want I'm going to come up a little bit higher here because I think I'm going to do some more floral detail on the bottom so I'm going to bring it down as far as that will still kind of hang there so I'm going to go about there I think okay so again if I just bring that up there you can see that shape once we start adding more onto this it will weight it down so for all the mats and layers now you can do this again slightly differently if you want I did it so that I had the short strips in the middle here and then longer ones coming down either side you might want to have one long strip along the bottom and then shorter pieces here on the side so I'm going to show you that way in the sizes but again you know you might want to change it so you'll want these two pieces for the front and the back every piece here is three quarters of an inch wide but the length of these are four so two of that size and then two again that three quarters wide by two and a quarter and then I have four pieces here which are one and a quarter again by three quarters wide and these will cover all of the sides here so these smaller ones are going to go in here and here okay like so those longer ones will go in the middle here and in the middle of the back and then those two will go on the sides on the back so I'm going to get them all stuck down okay next I want to add some shine before I stick the flowers down now I should have probably not added that next but this is clear and it will just make everything sparkle so I'm not worried so this is amazing stuff and this is the Cosmic Shimmer Glitter Kiss and this color here is Frosty Sparkle and it will just add a beautiful sparkle you can see hopefully it's picking it up all the sparkle on the sponge there so I'm just going to soften my sponge because it can dry up they do say you should rinse it I don't I just find that as soon as you apply it back into the medium the whole sponge starts to soften again so I'm just kind of pop in the sponge in there so you've got kind of a slope and you'll always rub the excess off you a little bit goes a very long way so that's nice and soft again now and I'm just going to it's nice on embossed surfaces because it picks up you know all the raised surface again you're not probably going to really see too much of this but I will bring it up closer in a moment but I'm just brushing it over like so it doesn't matter there's all different colors but if you've got the clear it's like a sparkle pen but in a paste and it dries very quickly as well I would also cover this backside here with maybe some either more white or some a patterned paper it doesn't matter that it's hitting that sentiment I'm going to brush over a little bit if I bring that up now you should be able to see there we go all the shine it's still drying a little bit but you've got all that sparkle on the bottom and I'm also just going to like I said do these things probably before you put it all together but I'm just showing you that you can still do it once it is you can go over it so if you do want it thicker then by all means do so again if I just bring up the front here you got that beautiful iridescent okay you can just about see it there and just adds so much sparkle to the card it looks absolutely beautiful so I'm going to give that a few more minutes to dry and then I'm going to start sticking down all of my flowers here and I'm going to follow the same arrangement of this one I've got a different butterfly I've got all the leaves there now I've inked these up and I've shaped them I've added you know all the staining detail and some little gems in the middle of them and if you want to see all of that in real time then I will link the Facebook live in the description box below so you can follow that one but I'm now going to get the heat gun on and get that all stuck down okay so that's now all stuck down I did end up having to do another pink flower because I realised I wanted a pink one here and a pink one down here so it looked nice against the yellow so rather than have three yellows together I used that extra one and popped it there instead so slightly different arrangement to this one here but I think it still looks really really pretty next I'm just going to finish it off with some sparkle pen on the butterfly and all the leaves now you could also add the cosmic shimmer sparkle but I'm going to use this now and again if I just bring this one up you should see the sparkle on the butterfly board here so I didn't do on the leaves actually so I might not on this one we'll see I'm just going to now cover this okay so just left the sparkle on the butterfly if it darkens the cardstock don't worry it's just because you've gone a bit heavier with it and it will dry clear eventually but that's now very shiny and then I'm going to add some Nuvo drops so you can see where I've added them all here so I've done the butterfly trail there and then I've just added them in in any little gaps I've got there now this is now an embossed surface so it's not as smooth as that one so I'm just going to place them on the kind of raised areas okay so I'll just bring that up now I will add some more to this piece here but I don't want to keep it upright for too long because otherwise those dots will drop but you can see there what I've done and I just need to die cut another stamen and an embellishment for that pink flower there but you just so you can see everything there so I'm going to lay that one back down so I'll just bring that one up again nice and close there so you can see I think it looks absolutely gorgeous so I hope you like this simplified version and I think by doing it this way as well it's nice to then be able to add the acetate so it gives you that floating effect of thoroughly enjoy putting these together I can't wait to see your versions if you haven't and you are on Facebook if you head over to mixed up crafters we've got a Facebook group there and you can share anything that you make following my tutorials and there's a lovely group of men and women there sharing all of their wonderful designs also coming up now will be a couple of other kind of step cards easel cards that you might enjoy and I'll share some playlists throughout the video as well that you might want to watch after this video and if you haven't subscribed and you've enjoyed today please hit the subscribe button and hit the notification bell and then you'll be notified every time I upload a video thanks for watching and I'll see you again soon bye