Today's Featured Artist is Irene Swain! (plus a bonus giveaway)

We are very excited to be featuring a very talented card-maker, Irene Swain, this week.  I know many of us dabble in all sorts of paper crafts, and cards are those deceiving small projects that end up being harder than you often imagine.  A beautiful card often takes as long as a great 12x12 layout, doesn't it?  Well, maybe just for me :)

This would be a great project to try for a dramatic Mother's Day Card - I think this format is very impressive visually!  Double kudos points with the moms for a handmade card that is also unique in shape!

And now on to Irene.....

Hi, I'm Irene. I'm excited to be featured here on Charity Wings! This blog is such a valuable resource of inspiring crafts tutorials!

I live in northern California with my wonderful husband and our "fur children." I love to make greeting cards, and my blog is called It's All In The Cards. I also enjoy scrapbooking, reading, hiking, traveling, good vegetarian food and everything Disney.

My greeting cards are for sale at the Studio Seven art gallery in Pleasanton, California, under the name "Ivy Swan Cards." I write the local and national scrapbooking columns at Examiner.com and serve as a member of the design team at Michelle Perkett Studio. My mom and I offer free card-making events through our charity, Scrapbooking Together. 

Ballerina bunny zig zag card and tutorial

Other views:

The digi stamps are Happy Easter Bunny and Happy Spring by Michelle Perkett (colored with Prismacolor pencils). The papers are all from Boxer Scrapbook Productions.


My zig zag card tutorial is at the end of this blog post. A feline assistant is optional.

Tutorial: 
I learned how to make this card during Technique Tuesday's Expanding Your Creative Borders class at Scrapbook Expo. I would recommend that class to anyone who enjoys learning new card-making techniques. I'm not sure of the proper name for this style of card, so I'm calling it a zig zag card. It's a lot of fun to make, and the decorating possibilities are endless!

[Step 1]
Start with a 12 inch by 5 inch sheet of paper.

[Step 2]
Score (crease) at 2, 4, 8 and 10 inches.

[Step 3]
Turn the paper and starting at the 2 inch horizontal score and ending at the 10 inch horizontal score that you made in step 2, score (crease) at 1.5 and 3.5 inches.

[Step 4]
Cut only along the 2 creases that you made in step 3.

[Step 5] 
Make mountain and valley folds along the creases, as shown in the picture below. (Note that the 3 horizontal sections have alternating orders of their mountain and valley folds.)

[Step 6]
Your card is now ready to decorate. Here is how it will look open and closed:

Irene is also offering a giveaway for those of you that post a comment below!  A winner will be drawn next Thursday and announced with the posting of next week's tutorial!  Unfortunately, Irene is only able to ship domestically, so we're sorry to exclude our international readers from this giveaway.  Perhaps we'll have to do an international only giveaway soon :)  

Here are the great items up for the lucky winner!