A Small Triptych Card

Angels announced the coming of the newborn babe and in centuries old tradition of iconic triptychs this little card does similar with its gatefold doors opening to the simple stable under some palm trees on a starry night.

This is the second in a series of blogs about Christmas cards made from the 2020 Hunkydory paper collection entitled The Miracle of Christmas.

To create this card, I played with scrap paper cute to the size of the heavy colored card stock I was using. After deciding on a simple gate fold with the inside top and bottom folds cut and inverted, I fussy cut out all the printed paper elements. Knowing that the palm trees were going to be adhered with tiny foam squares cut to fit, I added the foam at one step in my preparations before assembly.

The measurements of the outer adorable scorable card is 5 ½ inches (140 mm) tall by 8 ¼ inches (252 mm) wide. It was scored at 2 1/8 inches (55 mm) and at 6 1/8 inches (158 mm).

The inside, light weight, navy blue cardstock is also 5 ½ inches (140 mm) tall by 8 ¼ inches (252 mm) wide. And scored at scored at a hair more than 2 1/8 inches (55 mm) and at a hair less than 6 1/8 inches (155 mm). The inside card needs to have a slightly smaller center than the outside card to fold properly at the two folds. Using a T-topped ruler, I marked where the four cut lines should go (see downloadable template) and cut using a metal straight edge and craft knife. (You could use a sliding trimmer if you have one.)

triptych-template Download

To fold the inside piece, I first folded the card as a gatefold and then carefully aligning the inverted strips edges with card edges and made the inverted folds.

Decorating the inside of the card Involved cutting two strips of starry paper at 4 x 2 inches (100 x50 mm) and one 4 x 3 15/16 inches (100 x 98m) and gluing them so that the card fold were left exposed. The stable was glued down, and the foam padded palm trees adhered so as not to impede the card folds. Two stars were cut from the papers and the top on adhered with a foam square.

The outside decorations involved some reinforcement of the angels’ trumpets by gluing them onto scraps of the same paper. Once the paper decorations were added, Nuvo drops were added as stars by opening the card flat and allowing to dry flat.

The final sentiment was cut using an Impression Obsession die from an old cream envelope and glued to the back of the card.

I stamped the A2 envelope back with the Little Town of Bethlehem stamp using Crumb Cake Stampin’ Up ink which almost matches the gold Nuvo drops used on the card.