shared from ctmh's blog...
Love Notes with Mini Envelopes and a Trifold Card!
Fall in love this Valentine’s Day with Love Notes, one of our newest and sweetest paper collections for the new year! Featuring a variety of beautiful and endearing designs throughout the collection’s coordinating papercrafting products, Love Notes is sure to impress and make your favorite people feel even more special!
In addition to the collection of products, we’ve put together two workshops to get you going on ideas to create beautiful artwork. The scrapbooking workshop makes three darling, two-page 12″ x 12″ layouts. The free, downloadable guide is available on our website, here. Make sure to check out pictures of all three layouts along with the guide, as well as the discounted product bundle we’ve assembled for the workshop kit! Also on our website, you will see any additional supplies you may need to complete the scrapbook pages. (These are basic items that many of our returning crafters already have on hand, like ink pads, scissors, and mounting blocks for our stamps.)
As great as the scrapbooking workshop is, today, we are focusing our attention on celebrating relationships through the “beary sweet!” Love Notes cardmaking workshop!
The Love Notes cardmaking workshop makes 16 cards, four each of four unique designs. (The free guide for this workshop can be downloaded off our website, here!)
This cardmaking workshop is full of art-elevating techniques. Let’s take a good look at two of the cards.
One of the workshop cards has a special way of opening! From the front, it looks like an ordinary card, but when you go to open it, you’ll realize that it is a trifold!
Creating this pleated front is quite easy to achieve, too!
In this instance, we simply folded the card front in half, towards the front. You can measure it and use a bone folder paired with the trough of a paper trimmer, or just fold it in half like you would any other paper (there’s no need to complicate things!).
Once the card base is folded, cover the inside of the card with a soft patterned piece of paper and stamp a lovely sentiment on top. Any part of the sentiment that can be seen when the card is folded closed, cover with an accent on the front, like our stacked cardstock squares and stamped heart. Complete the look with a few puffy stickers, placing a couple that can be seen when the card is closed and a sneaky one hiding inside, to be found after opening the card!
This second card uses the envelope die that is part of the Love Notes Stamp + Thin Cuts set.
The envelope die will not only cut the paper for a 3″ x 2¼” envelope, but it scores it, too!
There is no guesswork required when folding this little guy! Do note, that if you are using one of our two-toned cardstock sheets, whichever side is facing the die will end up being the inside of the envelope. So, die cut intentionally, if you’ve got a certain look in mind. (We cut our cardstock with the light side facing the die, so the true color is on the outside and the lighter tone is on the inside.)
Once you’ve got this envelope-making skill down, a sweet card like this one comes together in a cinch! When assembling the mini envelope and note, you can choose to glue the note inside the envelope to make sure it stays put, or not. This die does make a functional envelope. When using it for cards or other projects, consider making the inside note a loose note, one that isn’t glued on and that can be pulled out for more, personalized sentiments! (Maybe even add a photo or other memento behind the note!)
Valentine’s Day is for celebrating relationships, and as a love note from us to you, we are giving away five Love Notes Stamp + Thin Cuts sets to five lucky readers! Make sure you are subscribed to this blog and share this post on Facebook, using the link below, for a chance to win! All winners will chosen by noon on Monday, January 22 (MST) and will be notified via e-mail. Good luck!! 
