Stacked Paper Card
Two pseudo-elements behind the card rotate and offset on hover to create a fanned paper stack effect. Works beautifully on light backgrounds.
Stacked Paper Card the 7th of 20 designs in the 20 CSS Cards with Animations collection. The design is implemented in pure CSS — no JavaScript required. Copy the HTML and CSS panels below into your project. Because the demo is pure CSS, it works in any framework or templating engine you happen to use. The design honours prefers-reduced-motion and uses real semantic markup, so it ships accessibility-ready out of the box.
Live preview
The code
<div class="stage-7">
<div class="card-stack">
<div class="stack-main">
<h4>Stacked Paper</h4>
<p>Pseudo-elements create layered paper cards that fan out on hover.</p>
<button class="stack-btn">Open →</button>
</div>
</div>
</div> .card-stack {
position: relative;
width: 200px;
}
.card-stack::before,
.card-stack::after {
content: "";
position: absolute;
border-radius: 12px;
transition: transform 0.35s cubic-bezier(0.23, 1, 0.32, 1);
}
.card-stack::before {
background: #d6c9ff;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
top: 8px;
left: 6px;
z-index: 0;
}
.card-stack::after {
background: #ffc8d6;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
top: 4px;
left: 3px;
z-index: 0;
}
.card-stack:hover::before {
transform: translate(4px, 6px) rotate(3deg);
}
.card-stack:hover::after {
transform: translate(-3px, 4px) rotate(-2deg);
}
.stack-main {
position: relative;
z-index: 1;
background: #fff;
border-radius: 12px;
padding: 20px;
box-shadow: 0 4px 20px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.12);
}
.stack-main h4 {
font-size: 13px;
font-weight: 700;
color: #1a1a2e;
margin-bottom: 4px;
}
.stack-main p {
font-size: 11px;
color: #b8b6d4;
line-height: 1.5;
margin-bottom: 12px;
}
.stack-btn {
font-size: 11px;
padding: 5px 14px;
border-radius: 6px;
background: #1a1a2e;
color: #fff;
border: none;
cursor: pointer;
}
/* parent stage backdrop (so the demo renders standalone) */
[class^="stage-"] {
width: 100%;
min-height: 200px;
display: flex;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
position: relative;
padding: 2.5rem 1.5rem;
box-sizing: border-box;
}
.stage-7 {
background: #f5f3ee;
}