Make flex items overlap

Here's how I'd do this using flexbox.

.cards {
  display: flex;
  align-content: center;
  max-width: 35em;
}

.cardWrapper {
  overflow: hidden;
}

.cardWrapper:last-child, .cardWrapper:hover {
    overflow: visible;
}

.card {
    width: 10em;
    min-width: 10em;
    height: 6em;
    border-radius: 0.5em;
    border: solid #666 1px;
    background-color: #ccc;
    padding: 0.25em;
  
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
    justify-content: center;
    align-items: center;
}

<div class="cards">
  <div class="cardWrapper">
    <div class="card">card 1 blah blah blah</div>
  </div>
  <div class="cardWrapper">
    <div class="card">card 2 blah blah blah</div>
  </div>
  <div class="cardWrapper">
    <div class="card">card 3 blah blah blah</div>
  </div>
  <div class="cardWrapper">
    <div class="card">card 4 blah blah blah</div>
  </div>
  <div class="cardWrapper">
    <div class="card">card 5 blah blah blah</div>
  </div>
</div>

Note that technically speaking, the cards aren't overlapping, they're just being clipped. But they look like they're overlapping. The trick is to wrap each card in another element with overflow: hidden.

The wrapping elements are shrunk to fit the available space, and as much of the cards as is possible is displayed in that space.

I include the :hover rule just to show how you could fully display a card from the middle of the "stack", but in a real project I'd probably do this for selected cards instead of hovered ones.

You can make elements in a flex layout overlap using transform: translateX(-10px), but that won't address the layout you're trying to get. I don't think you can do that in flexbox. But you could easily do this with JS.

var parentEl = document.getElementById("cards");

function sortCards() {
  var cards = document.getElementsByClassName("card"),
      cw = parentEl.clientWidth,
      sw = parentEl.scrollWidth,
      diff = sw - cw,
      offset = diff / (cards.length - 1);

  for (var i = 1; i < cards.length; i++) {
    cards[i].style.transform = "translateX(-" + offset * i + "px)";
  }
}

sortCards();

var b = document.getElementById("button");
b.addEventListener("click", function() {
  var div = document.createElement("div");
  div.classList.add("card");
  parentEl.appendChild(div);
  sortCards();
});

.cards {
  display: flex;
  max-width: 300px;
}

.card {
  height: 90px;
  border: 1px solid black;
  border-radius: 3px;
  background-color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.4);
  flex: 0 0 50px;
  background: red;
  transition: transform .25s;
}

<div><button id="button">addcards</button></div>
<div class='cards' id="cards">
  <div class='card'></div>
  <div class='card'></div>
  <div class='card'></div>
  <div class='card'></div>
  <div class='card'></div>
  <div class='card'></div>
  <div class='card'></div>
  <div class='card'></div>
  <div class='card'></div>
</div>

Make flex items overlap

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