Tis the season for me to be catching up my address book and sending out a season’s greeting… but this year, I decided to try something a little different. Usually I send a photo card or something I’ve designed and printed (occasionally I buy something fun and festive). I’ve been really enjoying making and printing paper cards (like my Jack-O-Lantern card you can get for free here) and I decided to make a flat laying, layered Merry card! Read on to see how I made this happen:
I started by figuring out a concept.
I tend to like having either a square or circle border, so I decided having a wreath would make sense since it’s essentially a circle itself.
Since I knew I wanted these to lay flat, I decided I wanted to have the layers peek out from under each other like a topographical map rather than being able to move the card to look at the more subtle layers if it were spaced between the layers.
Next, I figured out my colors.
I knew I wanted red and a couple shades of green.
I planned for yellow with an orange shadow for the word “Merry” but when I was shopping for paper for the card layers, I found a gold foil paper I really like, and decided using that foil with the yellow shadow would give me the look I wanted. I’m glad that I let myself explore with this to find what looked best.
I thought that the background would look nice to have snow, so I picked a blue that really made the white base layer pop and look like falling snow pilling up on the wreath.
Then, I gave it a test print.
I won’t show you the shredded test print, but suffice it to say I had WAY too many sharp and intricate details, so I had to readjust and round some of my corners to still give the same general feeling, but make the cut easier to print as a digital die-cut.
I printed my test at 5.5″ square too – but when I went looking at papers, I looked at envelopes too and a lot of the square envelopes I was finding are 5.5″ square. That means my card won’t fit if it has the exact same dimensions, so I decided to size down to 5.25″ square after some quick math.
Finally, I did my “final” print.
And it worked BEAUTIFULLY. I’m so glad that I adjusted the details to keep my general concept, but round out some of the sharp and detailed sections to give a clean result – I just think it looks so nice.
I’m also really glad I sized down to 5.25″ square because when I tell you it fit SO WELL once all layers were stacked together into my 5.5″ square envelope – I was glad my math worked out so well!
TaDa!
This was such a fun labor of love I hope I can give to the people I care about and give them a piece of art they can cherish too.
If you want grab these SVGs/PNGs or a PDF of the cut files for yourself, I’d love if you hopped over to my etsy and grabbed yourself this bundle, AND if you prefer having the pages precut, or the card preassembled for you, I’ve got you covered there too!
Check out my:
- Cut Files here
- Precut card sheets you can assemble yourself here
- Preassembled cards ready to be written in here
^^ don’t forget to click to pin to share with a friend or save for later!
Lizzy's Landscapes 
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