There’s just something impossible not to love about Highland cows — those shaggy coats, sweet faces, and laid-back country charm! For today’s card, I created a fun Z-Fold design featuring three adorable Highland cows peacefully grazing in a sunny field alongside the sentiment, “Just Grazing By to Say Hello.” The interactive fold adds a little extra surprise and dimension, making this card just as fun to display as it was to create. It’s the perfect way to send a cheerful hello and brighten someone’s day with a little farmhouse flair!
To make this card, you will need the following products from Kat Scrappiness:
Sentiment Shoppe - Within The Fold: "Highland Mini Moos Sentiments" 6x6 Stamp Set
Slimline Grass Border Craft Die
Freshed Picked Flower Sprinkles
You will also need the following:
Paper cutter/trimmer
Score board or scoring tool
Die cutting machine
Stamp positioner or stamping block
White cardstock (or if you prefer not to ink blend, you will need blue cardstock for the sky and green for the grass)
Alcohol markers or colored pencils
Ink pads in blue and green shades
Once you have gathered your supplies, let's create the card!
Step #1 – The card base
Trim an 8 ½” by 11” piece of white cardstock to 5 ½” x 8 ½” (save that smaller trimmed piece for a later step).
Step #2 – Adding the Fence Stamp
To help line up the fence stamps in a straight line across the page, I drew a line very lightly in pencil first before stamping. After stamping all of the fences, you can see there is a slight gap between them. You can either leave it that way or, instead, I used a black marker to connect the fences. Use an eraser to remove the pencil line.
Step #3 – Sky and Grass
With a blending brush, ink blend the sky using two shades of blue for a nice gradient just above the fences.
Do the same with the grass, using shades of green and an blending brush and ink blend just up to the bottom of the fences.
Step #4 – Coloring the Fences
Color in the fences and vines using alcohol markers or colored pencils. I noticed coloring the vines first helped me see where to color the fences.
Now is a good time to take a good look at the completed panel and see if you would like to add more blues to the sky or greens for the grass. If you want to add some more detail to the grass as in the finished card, now is the time to do that step by adding some tufts of grass in spots and glue some flower sprinkles onto the panel.
Step #5 – The bottom of the Z Fold (grass die cut)
Using that piece of white cardstock that you trimmed off earlier in Step #1, cut a piece off so it measures 8 ½” wide and die cut the Slimline Grass Border Craft Die. You can see in my picture, that I needed to do partial die cutting for the other side because my plates are just a tad smaller than the die cut. You may not need to do that depending on your set up.
Next, place this die cut onto your card panel (do not glue, just lay it on top) to see how much grass you want for the bottom of the z fold. I marked a small tick mark on the die cut where I want to trim it down and took that to my paper trimmer and trimmed off the excess.
Using the same inks that was used for the grass in Step #3, ink blend the grass die cut, both the front and the back. If the back was left white, you would see white grass when it is folded.
(Note: This is a good time to stamp your sentiment. I used the “Just Grazing By To Say Hello” stamp from the Sentiment Shoppe - Within The Fold: "Highland Mini Moos Sentiments" 6x6 Stamp Set to stamp at the bottom left of this die cut grass which you will see in another picture below.)
Step #6 – Clouds
Grab another piece of white cardstock and select which of the cloud dies from the A2 Cloud Border Craft Dies you wish to use. Place the die cut onto the white cardstock but since this die is not a slimline die, you will needed to be a little creative and extend the die cut so you can get a larger cloud border. In the picture, you can see that I left the one side hang off my die cutting plates so that area would not be cut.
After die cutting this once, line up the same die to the end of where it was die cut previously and run it through your die cutting machine again.
You can add some detail to the clouds at this time by lightly ink blending around the bottom of the die cut. You could probably die cut it the normal way but twice, and glue the two together to get one long cloud die cut.
Step #7 - Scoring
Card Panel:
Lay the card panel onto the score board face down (plain white side up) and score this at 4 ¼”. Flip the card over so it is now facing up making sure that it is oriented correctly (sky up/grass down). Score from the left side at 2 1/8”. Fold the card in half at the middle score line and then fold the top flap in half at that score line.
This is how it looks when folded flat and fits in an A2 sized envelope nicely:
Clouds and Grass:
With both of these facing up in the score board, score them at 4 ¼”. Flip them from left to right so the back is facing up (the stamped sentiment will be on the right) and from the left, score them at 2 1/8”. Go ahead and fold them at the score lines
Step #8 – Finishing the Z-Fold
Glue the clouds and grass only onto the left side panel. Once that is adhered, glue them to the right side of the card panel, leaving the middle bend not glued so it can move freely.
Now, go ahead and add your Highland Mini Moos Stamp Set, butterflies, water bucket/flower pale and any other embellishments to the card.
Note:
For the last Moo on the card, I noticed when I folded the card, the back of his head shown in all white. To fix this, I did a mirrored image technique of the stamp, colored him in using the same alcohol markers, and cut him out as best as I could to match the other one. I then glued this mirrored image cut out onto the inside of the z-fold. When the card is folded, it looks like a Moo is laying down in the grass. You can of course, leave it as is or just glue the Moo onto the card panel instead of the grass die cut.
If you’d like to see how to do a mirrored image of a stamp, leave a comment below.
And that completes the card!
I hope you enjoyed this card and I also hope you try this fun fold technique! We would love to see what you create using Kat Scrappiness products. If you haven’t already, please join us over at Kat Scrappiness Facebook page as well as Kat Scrappiness Insiders to see all the incredible creations! There’s also Instagram too Kat Scrappiness where you not only find inspiration but fun hops as well!
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Thank you for stopping by and happy crafting!
Crafty Bo
