Stack, Slice & Shuffle Technique

One of the ways to decorate the front of a greeting card is to cut and lay out different prints from a set of Stampin’ Up!’s Designer Series Papers. But that usually means cutting small shapes out of several pieces of paper from that set. With the “Stack, Slice and Shuffle” technique, though, I cut card-sized pieces out of 3 or 4 prints and end up using all of that paper to make 3 or 4 different card fronts.  What you’ll need: 4 different prints of Designer Series Paper, 3-3/4” x 5”; 1 piece of cardstock 3-3/4” x 5” (or you can use a piece 4” x 5-1/4” and trim it when you’re finished gluing the papers on); liquid glue (I use liquid glue so that I can adjust pieces easily as I lay them on the cardstock). For my project, I used the Online Exclusive paper set, Hello Irresistible. To begin the Stack, Slice and Shuffle, start with a template for cutting the papers. I usually make my templates and cut my papers 3-3/4” wide by 5” high. This gives me plenty of room to create cardstock layers behind the card front using at least two colors that complement the colors in the papers.  Then I stack the papers laying the template on top of the stack. I cut this entire stack using the Stampin’ Up! Paper Trimmer. With that many layers, I press a bit harder than I usually do with just one or two pieces of paper or cardstock. I definitely plan the order in which I’m going to make each cut before I start. You’ll notice that, on my templates, I number the cutting lines before I start to keep me from making any accidental “design modifications.” Once I’m finished, I discard the pieces of the template.  Once I have all four stacks of papers, I start the “shuffle” part of the process. I lay the stacks on my work surface in the pattern they’ll form on the card front. I leave the stack at the upper left alone. For the stack on the upper right, I take the top piece of paper and move it to the bottom of the stack. Then I move down to the stack on the bottom right and move the two top pieces (keeping them in order) to the bottom of the stack. Finally, for the stack in the lower left corner, I move the top three pieces (keeping them in order) to the bottom of the stack.  Finally, I begin adhering them to a piece of 3-3/4” x 5” cardstock, taking the top piece of each stack to make the first card front. Then I make each of the next three card fronts the same way.  That’s it for the basic steps. Once you have your four card fronts, you can use them as you’d use any other layer on a card. These are the cards that I made using these designs. The supply list for the cards I made using this template are at the end of this article.   Templates for You To Use  Here is a link to a .pdf file that contains a full-size copy of  three templates. Just print them on plain copy paper and cut them out on the outside edges. And don’t forget that you can make your very own original templates! Download FullSizeTemplates