Why haven't I made one of these before?

Another challenge I participated in was this one here. I was excited when I first read this because I'd never made a waterfall card. There are SO many different kinds of folds I've never tried still and I'm eager to get around to them.

When I showed this card to one of my regular customers/class attendees, her first words were, "When are we making this?" I've been wanting to do a Fabulous Folds class for several months now, but I've had other stamping events going on - maybe now is the time to plan one!

I had just 45 minutes to make a waterfall card and since I had no idea if I was going to have trouble with it or not, I went with my first instinct - to use Wild About You and make this a kids' birthday card. I figured a child would REALLY enjoy the interactivity of this project.

Since I knew I wanted this to be for a child, I chose bright colors - Purely Pomegranate, Brilliant Blue, Wild Wasabi, Yoyo Yellow, Brocade Blue, and Garden Green. I also decided to use the polka dot stamp from Polka Dots & Paisley for the card front's background. It added nicely to the "fun" feel.

The tutorial to make a waterfall card is readily available here. Good, precise scoring is essential to the card flipping properly so pay close attention to those steps.

You can see in this photo that when you pull down on the ribbon, each image flips over and folds behind the next image. Once you've viewed all the images, you slide the ribbon piece back up and the images flip over each other in reverse (the "waterfall").

The "wild about you" stamped words on this project are actually on one stamp. To stamp just one word at a time on each square, I used a water-based marker to color in the word I wanted to stamp. I then "huffed" or breathed onto it to remoisten the ink, then stamped on my cardstock. When using this technique, you must clean your stamp very well between stampings. If you don't, you'll get faint images of the other parts of the stamp that you weren't intending on stamping! I like to use my Stampin' Mist and Stampin' Scrub several times between inkings to ensure the stamp is perfectly clean.

I did complete this challenge in the 45 minutes allotted, despite having never made a waterfall card before. The secret was to not second-guess myself in the design department. I did not stress over the stamp sets or colors. I just went with whatever popped into my head. It's so awesome and freeing to create like this! Try it!

Now go create!
-Nicole