Before we get into how this particular card — the Light of the World card — is made, let me quickly explain what an “easel card” is, because that might be a new idea for you.

What is an Easel Card?

An easel card is a top-hinged card with a front panel that’s folded an extra time in the middle so that when you open it up, the front of the card folds into a tent or “easel” shape.  This allows it to stand up.  Most of the time, you’ll need to also add something with a little bulk to the inside of the card — another cardstock layer (possibly “popped up” on foam tape), rhinestones…whatever — so the bottom Edge of the card has something to rest against.

These can be surprisingly simple to make, but look extra-fancy.  The only real “trick” is to make sure whatever you glue to the bottom half of the front is not attached at the top half, or it will impede opening.  (You’ll see this a little more clearly in a bit, on my example).

I’m wanting to start sending out cards with Scripture on them, that are freestanding so they can be put on display, and an easel card is one great option for that.

Okay, so…let’s get to the actual card…

Light of the World Easel Card

Most of the supplies I used for these cards were already in my stash, so I can’t link you to them specifically.  But most of them are also pretty basic (e.g. solid-colored cardstock).  I used:

• dark navy blue paper (may have come from a Spellbinders kit)
• tomato-colored paper (old Paper Reflections, listed as Pumkin/Persimmon — yes, the label is really spelled that way)
• pale blue parchment-style cardstock (similar to this)
• dark grey cardstock
• gold mirror cardstock (Spellbinders) 
• 1/4″ double-sided tape (This is what I actually have but it’s no longer available.  This seems similar.)
• copper-colored glitter washi tape
• Bearly Art glue
• scoring board (opt.)
• printer
• Charlie Craft die: Menorah – 2 Piece Set
• Charlie Craft die: Celebrate Chanukkah (for the flames)

Assembling the Lampstand

I’d already been planning on using this verse, so when I saw the 7-branched menorah in the die set, I knew it was perfect.  But you could do a similar card using a more traditional candle, a light bulb, a jar of fireflies…there are a lot of different options.

The first thing I did was cut the menorahs/lampstands out of gold mirror cardstock.  (I made six of these cards.)  This step is pretty simple and straightforward.

Spellbinders Platinum 6 Machine Die Cutting BundleScrapbook.com Magic Mat

Second, I cut out the flames.  The menorah die doesn’t come with flames.  (I’m not sure why.)  So I cut those from another Charlie Craft die, the Celebrate Chanukkah die, but I cut them out of copper glitter washi tape.  This adds such a cool added “something” to the cards, especially in real life, because the glitter catches the light and makes the flames seem to flicker!

To do this, I grabbed a scrap piece of Paper, and stuck on a Strip of washi tape just wide enough to cover the necessary space.  Then I lined up my die, and used partial die cutting to cut out (mostly) only the flames.  To do partial die cutting, you put the top plate over only the part you want to cut.  the rest of it then doesn’t get pressure and won’t cut through.

Next is probably the fiddliest bit of the whole card.  You obviously can’t leave the lampstand entirely freestanding if the flames are separate from the lamp itself, because…well, you’d just have little flame pieces falling all over the place not attached to anything!  So I used my Bearly Arts glue to assemble the menorahs with their respective flames onto a background of dark grey cardstock.  Then I “fussy cut” around each one — which just means cutting them out, close to their outlines.

It’s really hard to do these metallics justice in a photograph!

Preparing the Sentiments

Because of what I wanted on these cards, I chose to print my sentiments onto the cardstock with my printer, and then cut them apart for the cards.  With standard letter-size cardstock, here’s how I set up my document:

Set right margin to 0″.  (Pay attention to your spacing when you actually type, because most printers won’t print all the way to the edge, so you want to make sure you leave a little bit of margin even though the page doesn’t technically have one.)
Insert a table, 5.5″ wide, aligned right.  Two columns.  No border.
Set row height: 1.5″.  Left column width: 2.25″.  Right column width: 3.25″.
Leave the left column empty.  Center-align (and vertically center-align) the text in the right column.

Now you can enter your text.  Be sure you visually leave whatever margins you need to.  Adjust the font and font size as necessary.  This one is a bit on the small side, but due to the length of the verse, it is what it is.

This will make strips 1.5″ tall, and the document is set up to be cut down to 5.5″ — the width of a standard, horizontal card.  You might want to print onto a regular sheet of paper just to make sure it’s right.  If you’re only making one, this is probably less of an issue, since you won’t be messing up the whole sheet of paper if it’s not.  I printed mine in dark blue ink on light blue parchment-style paper.

Once it’s all printed out, cut the paper from top to bottom, so you should have a 5.5-inch-wide right side piece (printed), and a 3-inch (blank) left side piece.  You don’t need the left side piece for this project; set it aside. Cut the right side piece into 1.5″ strips with the text centered top-to-bottom.

Assembling the Card

Here’s where you get to put it all together.  First you need to make the “easel” in your cards.  Now, you can either use premade navy blue card bases, and add an extra crease, or you can do what I did and make the whole thing from letter-size cardstock.

Cut the cardstock in half, so you have two pieces that are 8.5×5.5″.  Each of these will be a card base.  Score them if you can (with a scoring tool, or with the dull side of a butter knife against a ruler edge), so that you can fold them in half…and then fold the front side in half again.

Back your sentiment pieces with the tomato-colored accent paper.  The smart way to do this is to cut a strip of paper about 1.75″ wide by 5.5″ inches, and just center your sentiment piece on top of it.  Unfortunately, I only had a small scrap of red-orange paper left, so I had to cut a bunch of narrow strips and attach them to the back along the edges of my sentiment pieces, which is a bit more finicky.

Here’s what I did: apply three strips of double-sided tape to the back of the sentiment piece — one along the top edge, one along the bottom edge, and one across the middle in between them.  Remove the backing from one of the “edge” strips and carefully attach the accent piece.  A little bit of the adhesive will still be exposed.

Peel the backing off the other “edge” piece and carefully attach that strip, as well.  Once again, you’ll have a small bit of adhesive exposed.

Now peel the backing off the third strip of tape and you can attach the edged strip to the card.  You can do this however you want, as long as it’s only adhered below the fold of the card front.  I lined the top edge of my pale blue paper with that fold, so the narrow upper orange edge actually covers the fold (but it doesn’t have any adhesive on it, so it doesn’t stick there).

Now it’s time to attach the lampstands.  I put more double-sided tape on them like this:

Notice that there isn’t any tape at the top!  This is because the part of the lampstand that extends up to the top half of the card will not be attached.  That will allow the card to fold and the lampstand to stick up from it.

Remove the backing from this tape and then adhere the lampstand to the card in a position that looks right.

Final Step: The Interior of the Card

The very last step is to add something to the inside of the card for the bottom edge of the card front to rest against when it’s open.  There are a few ways you could do this.  Some people might want to do it in a way that includes adding a light-colored insert for writing on.

This “bumper” portion of the interior is often used as an additional design element, but in this instance, I didn’t want anything to detract from the lampstand, so I just used a double-layered strip of navy blue cardstock.  I cut 1/4″ strips, and glued two together with my Bearly Art glue to make them a little thicker.

Then I used a ruler to make it easy to attach the strips straight.  I lined the ruler up with the bottom of the card and, holding it in place, put down a line of glue just above the top edge of the ruler and then butted the cardstock strip up against it to glue it in place.

A little closer, in case you can’t quite tell what I’m doing:

When everything is done and dry, you’ll want to trim off any little bits of strips that extend beyond the sides of the card(s).

These go great with either navy envelopes or tomato-colored envelopes.  (I got mine from Etsy, but they were someone’s “destash” listing, not a regular envelope seller, so you’ll just have to poke around.)