We are all finding new ways to connect during these interesting times, and last night I spent a couple of hours chatting and crafting with a lovely bunch of Stampin’ Up! demos from a team called the Paper Adventures. Most of these ladies are located around either Perth or the South West of WA, but with the regional borders that are currently in place in WA, we aren’t able to catch up in person. So we caught up via a virtual online meeting instead.

Last night we worked on a set of cards made using a template called the Double Wonder. Many of you would have heard of the One Sheet Wonder before, but this layout comes from using 2 pieces of 6″x12″ Designer Series Paper. The original template idea came from Shannon West, and another Stampin’ Up! demo names Julie Davison from the USA created a really nice downloadable template. You can see Julie’s downloadable template and her completed cards here.

In total I made 11 cards, but I did cheat a little bit and used a bit of extra gold foil. The trick with this Double Wonder, is picking DSP where both sides coordinate well, and and where any directional patterns are consistent on both sides. In my case, I used some left over Sale-A-Bration paper I had called Golden Honey Speciality DSP, however I wanted the black and gold stripes to run vertically, and the pattern on the back ran horizontally. So in my cards, whilst I did use two 6″x12″ pieces of paper, I only used one side of each sheet.

The layout for card number one (above) uses the Delightful Tag Topper punch for the sentiment, with the sentiment itself coming from the Love What You Do stamp set.

The card number two layout (shown above) was the only one that didn’t suit the metric A4 card standard bases. The US card bases are 5.5″ (just short of 14cm) and our Australian card bases are 14.85cm tall. So the strips ended up slightly too short and I didn’t think they looked right. As my DSP was already cut, I just trimmed down my card base to be 5.5″ tall. When you look at the template, when cutting these strips a 1″ x 5.25″ it leaves a strip down the bottom which is then used in card number 3. However I didn’t end up using this piece anyway as I wanted to use gold foil, so if I was doing it again I would cut these strips to be a length to suit the Australian card bases, and just use another ad-hoc strip of coloured card fo my third card layout.

My sentiment in the above cards from for the stamp set Colorful Seasons, and is stamped on a large stitched circle.

For the third card layout, as I mentioned above I didn’t use the leftover strips of DSP, I didn’t really think it worked for my DSP style. So instead I use a scrap strip of gold foil. I had intended to mix the DSP so that there was a different piece up the top and bottom, but I forgot!. The sentiment comes from the So Sentimental stamp set and is cut out using the coordinating Stitched So Sweetly dies.

Julie gave instructions for a fourth bonus card, but I changed this up a little. As explained above, out Australian card bases are slightly longer than the US ones (or in the case of this layout, wider). I didn’t want to cut down the base this time, so instead of used the four small rectangles that are in the template, and combined them with two extra bits of foil measuring 1.25″ x 1.5″. The sentiment comes from the stamp set Abstract Impressions and is cut out with a Stitched Nested Label die.

If I am being honest I a not normally a fan of one sheet wonder card sets, but I really liked this template, and I will definitely use it again. A set of cards like this would make a really nice gift for someone too.