Romantic stepper card with tutorial

Hello lovely people,

Gosh, doesn't time fly?!
I intended to post this over the weekend but got carried away with other things...all good!
I hope you all had a lovely weekend whatever you were up to :-)

I have another stepper card to share with you and this time I have done a tutorial to go with it.
I am also showing off some lovely LOTV products on this card as part of the Design Collective.

So, first up I'll show you the finished card and then I'll get into the tutorial.

I started with a 14.5 x 29cm rectangle of card, and the picture below shows where I made the scores (dashed lines) and cuts (solid lines).

I always start by making little marks on all four edges of the back of the card (what will be the inside) at the indicated measurements on the picture.

Then I make the 2 cuts (the solid horizontal lines) with a craft knife and finally I score the other lines with a very ancient metal toothpick...but I guess any scoring tool that you have will be fine!

This method means that I cut and score exactly the bits that I need to and no more, so you end up with a nice complete back panel and no unsightly extra score lines.

I then gradually fold it up, starting with the middle fold and working down from there.
One of the folds (second from right hand side) is technically scored the 'wrong' way round for folding if you do all the score lines on the back, but I find it's a lot easier to score everything just on one side and just take care when folding it.

I sometimes like to get a little extra space on my central panel so for this design I cut a rectangle of white card and die cut the left and right hand sides, so the finished panel, as below, ended up about 11.5 x 13cm.

I cut rectangles of DP just slightly smaller than the side and bottom panels so a little white border is visible.
As usual, all the panels were inked and stitched.

I wrapped the bottom panel with twine before I attached it.
Now, I've been asked a few times how I attach twine and my main tip is just to fray the end of the twine first so it lays a bit flatter, then I simply tape it down!
Like so...

I then added the pink heart panel and image panel, sliding them under the twine.  I had to be very specific about the order in which I added the layers and twine so I could get the twine on top of the image!

And I can't finish without a close up of the adorable dog, which Dr. Hubby says is entirely unrealistic because dogs don't have opposable thumbs so there is no way he could hold on to the balloon - lol!

Card recipe;

Image: Odd Dog  -Balloon - LOTV

DP: Yours truly - Pebbles

Twine: Ivory button twine - The Ribbon Girl

Tag: Sentiment tags - LOTV

Tag: Family sentiment tags - LOTV

Sentiment: For you circular sentiments - LOTV
Sentiment: Greetings postmarks - LOTV
Tag: Christmas sentiment tags - LOTV

Dies: Heart flower lace - Magnolia Doohickeys, Heart stems - Impression Obsession

Sentiment:

Copic colours;
Dog: W1/2/3/4/5
Ligt patches on dog: W00/0/1
Shading on balloon: RV34 & blender

The stepper card is not the fanciest of fancy folds but it's one I really like and I hope some of you may find something of use in my tutorial, so thanks for reading :-)

Thanks for visiting and I really appreciate any comments that you leave,