Tamara's Paper Trail: July 2026

Wednesday, July 1, 2026

Easy Shadow Blocking Cards | Free Tutorial, Measurements & Video - MCM layout June 29, 2026

Happy Wednesday! ... Except I broke a nail and now I am having trouble typing! lol true story! I haven't had a broken nail in over a year so it's throwing everything off! hee hee - First World Problems, eh?

I hope you had a chance to pop in to MCM Monday night. As always, it was fun! I decided to try my hand at the latest layout craze "Shadow Blocking". I've seen it all over the place and then was REALLY struck by a card made by Lynn Dunn over at Stamptastic Designs. I share her card at the end of this post. It's a really easy layout, that help use up 1" scraps you have on hand. Check out the cards we made ...

A fun effect, right?? I can't decide if I like the smaller 1" squares or the "chonky" 1 1/2" squares. Which do you prefer?

This is the first one I made, using the Bloom Boutique Designer Paper. The sentiment is from Banner Sayings, which coordinates with the Three Banner Punch I also used. The black embellishments are from the new Adhesive Backed Bats, Ghosts and Dots. This is the 1" square version. The white layer is 4" x 5 1/2".

This one is the same idea but I used Night of Navy as a base and for the shadow square and they are all 1 1/2". The tag and sentiment are from the Scalloped Blooms bundle. The white layer is 3 3/4" x 5 1/2".

This one uses a 3" x 4" piece of Lovely Blossoms Designer paper. This layout works well with "scene" papers like this one. I uses our retired Brass Butterflies and the sentiment from Banner Sayings. Secret Sea is the paper/ink I used.

This is another "scene", using the Velvet Meadow Specialty Paper. The sentiment is from Flowering Meadow and the embellishments are the Dreamy Flowers.

This is the card from Lynn Dunn that inspired me the most. I absolutely LOVE it!

If you'd like to make one yourself, here is the "recipe" of the pieces you need to prep. I hope you try it!

Here is the Mystery Card Monday (MCM) Facebook Live replay, showing you how to cut the papers and put all the pieces together. Check it out!

That's it for this week. If you would like to join me LIVE for my MCM (Mystery Card Monday) sessions, you can catch me on my FaceBook Page here at 7:00 pm Mountain Time every Monday ... or on my YouTube Channel here at the same time (I stream live to both). Like and Follow my FB Page and/or Subscribe to my YouTube Channel. I'd love to have you - the live community is AMAZING and so much fun!

If you live in Canada and would like to purchase any of the items I used for my cards, just click any of the pictures below and you will be taken to my Stampin' Up! online store. (I apologize that not all products are shown! When I do a blog post before the product is available for sale I can't add it to the list shown below.) Thank you! I appreciate your support!

Stay amazing!

Tamara

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