The germ of an idea

The other night, I dreamed that I made a card, by folding a 12" x 6" strip of card into "steps" and then adding a rectangle twice the size of the step to each forward facing panel to make three layers. I've seen photos of similar cards, but never seen how it was done, but it all seemed clear to me in the dream, so when I woke up I hastily scribbled some notes and set about making the card.

This side-on view shows the effect I was trying to achieve.

Now here's where I was still in dream land and not the real world - I decorated each panel separately, treating it as a stand alone item yet co-ordinated with the other - like a book that has a new chapter of the same story on each page. When attached to the flattened out base card, the panels looked great

But when I stood the card up, I'd not borne in mind that each one would obscure  part of the one behind. So going back to the book analogy, instead of a separate chapter on each page,  I should have been telling a story that flowed from page to page.

I'll be using this technique again, but learning from my mistakes with my first attempt. If you'd like to try to create a card of your own, here are the measurements to use (I usually work in cm but found inches easier for this as they come to whole numbers when you use a single sheet of card)

Take a 12" square of card and cut it into two 12" x 6" strips. Cut one strip at 2" and 6" to give 3 panels, 2" x 6", 4" x 6" and 6"x 6", Take the other strip and score at 1", 2", 4", 6" and 9" then fold mountain-valley-mountain-valley-mountain

I'm going to join in with Fancy Folds at Ooh La la Creations but I'll be back again later with a fancy folded card that DID work the way I'd intended it to!