Treasured Frames with Joanne

Butterfly Garden - Treasured Frames Center Stepper

For this card I've used the Couture Creations Modern Essentials, Treasured Frames cut, foil and emboss die set with some of the beautiful 12"x12" papers from their Butterfly Garden collection, along with elements from the Butterfly Garden ephemera pack.

The card base is made from a sheet of 300gsm, white A4 card, or if you prefer to work in imperial measurements (inches) you can trim your card to 11" long. The important thing is to know what the measurement is from the card edge to the centre fold of the card. For A4 this is 14.9cm, and for 11" it is 5 1/2". If you are working with a scoring board it is easier to work in inches, as the score lines line up exactly with the 1/8" marks.

To fit the panels cut by the smaller frame in the Treasured Frames set, the side panels of the card base need to be 6cm or 2 3/8" wide. The middle panel can be whatever is left once you have these each side. On my card it's 9cm wide and the panel cut with the large frame in the set is approximately 10.5cm - so it over hangs the base card on both sides.

Here are guides for where to score and cut your card base. I explain the method in my Centre Stepper Card Base video.

11" Card - Imperial Measurements (inches)

A4 Card - Metric Measurements (cm)

I laid the dies out on my sheet of 12x12 paper to decide what areas I would use for my 3 panels.

I trimmed these areas out of the large sheet so that I had pieces that would fit on the hot plate of the GoPress and Foil, and foiled these using silver foil. As this is paper rather than card, I also used a layer of 250gsm card as this reinforces the paper for the embossing, I then stick the 2 layers together after cutting and foiling the paper.

I used a strip from the ephemera pack, matted onto a length of the patterned paper along the bottom edge of the stepper card.

Once the panels are made its just a matter of sticking them in place on the card base and adding embellishments. I've used flowers from the ephemera pack and die cuts using some of the mini dies from the Butterfly Garden Collection.