 Hey everybody it's Sam at Mixed Up Craft. Thank you for watching my tutorial today. I'm going to be showing you how to make a hidden message card. So this has been a requested tutorial. Two ladies have requested this one, a lady called Sylvia and a lady called Jane. So thank you for sending you know the requests for this and sorry you've had to wait so long because it just takes me a while to get through them and you know things happen. So this is my take on it. Now I had a little look online and I found a tutorial from 10 years ago and it was a teacher actually showing you how to make one of these in the classroom. But I have seen this style before. I'm sure I've done something similar in school or I know I've come across this before because I recognise the mechanism and I'm sure you will too. So it's a 5x7 card. I've done mine with a belly band but there are other ways to fold this and I'll show you in a moment. You basically remove the belly band and you open it up and you have this. Okay so you have all these panels you know it stands up nicely. It's like a bit of a concertina fold but then the idea is and this is why it's a hidden message. The one thing I would say is you want to give this to someone who is going to understand that they've got to kind of hunt for it. They've got to move this card around. So you squeeze it all together and then you pull out this section and you have a whole hidden part and this is where I would say to write your message. So I've left these blank. Okay so again if I just pull that open like so so squeeze it down and then these kind of open to reveal a whole another section. It's really really cool. Now you could also have it folded like this and you could have it wrapped with some ribbon or the bow and pop it in an envelope like that but the other cool thing is on the back you have all of this section. Okay I've just put some you know fun little ephemera and just anything really but you could just keep it all plain but there's an even more hidden section and if you fold it flat so there's where you've opened it. If you fold it in half this way and then open this section you have a whole another area again. So I think this would be really good for you know colleagues you know at work because there's loads of spaces for people to write messages and you could really write some funny just all sorts you know let your imagination go with that. It's it's just really cool but it's great for children but it's also really good for adults as well so again you just close that one up and then open it all up again. So you've got one two three four. I know some of you now are going to be watching this thinking oh no this is just way too hard. It is so simple honestly you will not believe just how simple this is and I will show you every step but the longest part is choosing what you're going to have. The actual card to make you can make this no and I'm not lying in like 10 minutes it's so so fast. Let's get into the tutorial. Okay so I've got everything cut for today's that was my other template there so like I said you can have it that way but I think I'm just going to keep mine in the five by seven flat you know size like so but again you can see just how cool it looks and then on the back again if you want to do more there do it that way was it like that and then like that it's just really really fun I can't stop doing it so anyway so I'm using pebbles ink and I was given all these bits from magazine from magazine feature that I've done so I've got all of this to use which is great we've got the puffy stickers the phrase ephemera and the icon ephemera I have just mixed all mine you can see actually no did I keep no I have mixed it all I think I'm going to catch that one there there's all phrases in there which I will use but there's just tons of bright bold fun colorful pieces so I'll be cutting them up so I've gone and cut a piece of cardstock here I'm going to use that for my belly band so this is a piece of 10 by 7 and along that 10 inch side you just want to score it two and a half five and seven and a half okay and then fold and burnish all of the score lines and then fold it in half like this okay and you're going to score at well these score lines we're then going to cut down so if you'd rather do a pencil mark you can but you want to do it at one and three quarters three and a half and five and a quarter so you have four equal sections okay and it kind of yeah it should have gone through both sides but you're just going to keep it folded in half and you're just now going to cut up those lines so like I said if you want to keep the you know use pencil lines instead you can but make sure you pinch it really really well together you don't want it kind of going you know when you cut through multiple pieces of paper and it starts to kind of all go off in one direction just you know it's cardstock you're cutting through so it may want to budge so just keep keep them squeezed together okay that one and that one okay so now we can open it up and you will have two and a half two and a half and then you'll have all of this in the middle and then you'll have another two and a half piece okay then you're going to need two pieces of whatever cardstock I've got white here so there might be mats and layers and these measure two and three eighths so they're just one eighth of an inch under the the width of these pieces by seven okay you want that full width and then it's up to you whether you want to go under first over and then under you may want to go under first and then over because each one will be the opposite to whatever one you do first so I'm going to do under over the next one under the third one and then over the last one so under the first over the second under the third so you finish with it over the bottom one and push it right in okay and you want to make sure it's you know the perfect height of that card and then this one then this is what locks it together this one you'll do the opposite so this time I'm going to go over the first one okay under the second one over the third and then under the last one it's not fiddly you just want to get them going just slide it all down and now that's all locked together then fold it back the other way and just burnish everything just so it feels you know like it's going in the right direction and now you can open it up and again now it's down to decorating so I've got these panels here which I've already popped my pattern paper on and these are going to go on the front so these pieces here the white is two these are two so it's two and a quarter by six and three quarters and then the pattern paper is two by six and a half so you're going to want four pieces of each but your pattern paper you may want to vary so I've got the hip hip array on the inside and then on the front of the kind of gatefold I'm going to have this one here and then I'm going to have this lovely topper with my belly band on the front okay so I'm going to get those mats all stuck down first of all next I need to decorate all these sections here so you know it's entirely up to you how you do this so one thing I would say is have the hidden message because obviously you know they're going to open it up like this you know it displays nicely but the hidden message is in this piece so whatever you're going to you know write to them I would have it within this section here so I'm going to keep maybe two of these sections of the white I'm going to keep them plain so I've got room to actually write something but I'm going to decorate all of these and all of this side here I would say first of all decorate this and then move it so you know what you're working with because if you decorate here and then you've got all the space on the back as well you just might start to confuse yourself so I would certainly do each side you know bit by bit which is what I'm going to do so I've got lots of different papers from this collection and obviously it all ties in together so then I'm going to cut some of these pieces here so I would say if you want to cut any mats for any of these you know smaller sections the white ones I'm just going to stamp or stick stickers onto I'm actually only going to cut pattern paper for the to go over this kind of pinky paper so they're two and a half wide so I would do two and I don't know if I want to do a quarter inch border this time mind you go one eight no I'm going to do I'm going to do two and a quarter by one and a half okay okay so I've done that one just stamped a couple of images here and I can color them later on and I'm still going to add other bits here probably just going to do some colorful shapes and bits and pieces but now I'm going to fold out this middle section these two I'm going to keep free for me to actually write something and I'm going to just decorate the same so I'm going to cut some more pattern paper and just carry on and get it all finished really okay so I've done everything there and then I've just into the belly band but you open up you have this section and then obviously it all stands up close it up and then you have this part here and I've got these empty to write my message but then if you fold it in half this way so and then you've got the back which I've just decorated there okay but then if you fold it in half so here's the front if you fold it in half that way you also have an even more hidden message section and I've got this one here which says one year older and then you can write something again in that section there it's really fun I love this one I've done a few little doodles on it and I just think it's great so you could then have it kind of like that if they wanted to but then it all opens and takes you back to the beginning again so it's kind of a bit like an impossible card you know the never-ending cards those kind of things it's just got a yeah just that kind of it's a bit of an optical illusion I guess because people look at it and they think how is that just done that and then how have I just done that and then done that so yeah it's it's clever you've got to make it to get it so now I've just got that one there and then I've got this piece of one and a half by 12 but it doesn't have to be 12 as long as you can wrap it around I mean that's probably too long so I'm going to end up trimming trimming that off I do that I can just stick it over the top like that it should be okay actually so I don't want the belly band so tight that you can't get it off so just make sure you can slide it off okay and then I've got that nice big one there so I'm just going to pop some glue through the middle slide it off just so I make sure I've got no glue which I haven't okay so there is the finished card so just slide off the belly band open it up and you've got this and then you've got that section there and then you've got the back again you can just put pattern paper on there if you want to you also notice I changed these I don't think I mentioned it I wasn't happy with the the or the yellowy color it just didn't work properly but then also if you fold it in half that way and I think this is the real hidden one then you've got space there I think it's a great one like you could do like a nice little Valentine's kind of thing or like even like a proposal I don't know there's just so many fun ways like maybe for your children to say that they're going to Disneyland or something you could you know say where are we going and they're looking for ages going I don't know I don't know what to do I can't see anything and then they look you've got to fold it that way and then you get that completely hidden section I just think it's great it's really really fun it's really interactive I think it's a great one for children but also you know for adults too and then it just slides back in the bellyband just make sure that you get your you know these pieces here because obviously they are kind of loose and I think I've got it caught on that bit a little bit make sure you don't catch it on there but yeah there we have it so I hope you've enjoyed this one I think it's such a fun card can't wait to see your variations and yeah thank you for watching please give me a thumbs up if you've enjoyed today or consider subscribing so you get to see more see you later bye