This week is all about honoring the Valentines in our life – be they friends, family, or significant others. Anyone whose special to you deserves a little handmade love from time to time. And today we’re pairing up some older Stampin’ Up! bundles with some of the newer papers to create this super cute spanner fun fold card design. We’re also going to be using the reverse stamp technique to flip an image. So let’s get to it.

We get started with a base of Fresh Freesia cardstock, which is cut to standard A2 size. We’re creating a fun fold today that is inspired by the Spanner Panel fold by fellow demo Jackie Bolhuis. To create the front spanner panel, the front panel of the card is cut from the bottom edge to the center score line on each side at the 1 1/4-inch mark, giving you a front panel that has 3 flaps – 1 1/4-inch, 3-inch, and 1 1/4-inch. The two smaller front flaps are covered with strips of the striped pattern from the Toadstool Gardens paper pack. The center flap is covered with a piece of the Everyday Skies paper, which is going to serve as the backdrop for our focal scene. We’ll cut a 3/4-inch strip of Fresh Freesia to span the front card panel and connect only the two smaller side panels, which are going to lift up separately from the center panel. This strip is going to serve as the structural base for our focal scene, so we’ll begin by covering it with grass. Our grass is cut from Old Olive and a piece of the Floral Delight paper using the Bright Skies long cloud edge die. This provides some nice rolling tufts of grass that don’t distract from our scene. These strips of grass are adhered to the strip of Fresh Freesia with dimensionals, layering one on top of the other to give depth. Using the Playing in the Rain dies, we’ll cut some tufts of grass from Shaded Spruce and Granny Apple Green cardstock and tuck them in, adhering with glue dots. The mailbox is diecut using the Sending Love dies. The post is cut from Blackberry Bliss, while the box is cut from Fresh Freesia glimmer paper and Fresh Freesia cardstock. The flag is Petal Pink for a pop of contrast. An industrial trinket serves as the screw that affixes the flag to our mailbox. A larger envelope is diecut from Beautiful Bokeh paper and closed with a heart sequin. Once assembled, we’ll tuck the mailbox into the grass and adhere to the far left panel with dimensionals, ensuring that we don’t have any overlap onto our center panel of clouds. Tuck the envelope inside the box an adhere with a dimensional or two inside the box.

Now for our main character. Turtle is from the Playing in the Rain stamp set, but when stamped as-is, he will be facing the wrong direction. To get our turtle facing toward the left, you’ll want to stamp the image onto your silicone mat and then carefully press your white cardstock on top to transfer the image onto the paper. Be sure that you’ve inked the stamp heavily to ensure that the image is dark enough once you’ve transferred from the silicone mat to paper. Next, I colored the turtle with a combination of Old Olive and Shaded Spruce Stampin’ Blends. I used a color lifter on the shell to lighten things up a bit and provide good contrast with the skin of turtle’s body. I cut him out with paper snips and then adhered to the grass with several layers of dimensionals for plenty of height. I stamped a smaller envelope from Sending Love on Beautiful Bokeh and cut out with the coordinating die.

The front sentiment is stamped in Blackberry Bliss using the Sending Love sentiment and then diecut with the Friends for Life banner using the extension method so that each end has matching shape. I adhered over the grass with dimensionals. We finish off the front with a selection of purple sequins. On the center panel, tucked discretely behind the mailbox, I stamped the small “sent with love” sentiment and added a few heart sequins around it. The inside panel of the card is left blank for a personalized message. The message panel is flanked with two strips of Beautiful Bokeh paper.

Isn’t this such a fun card?! I love creating scenes, and while we have some terrific products in the current mini catalog, Stampin’ Up! has some great go-tos in the main catalog that should get a little love, as well! Tune in tomorrow for Sketchy Fridays…with a twist!

Products used in today’s card:
Fresh Freesia, Old Olive, Granny Apple Green, Shaded Spruce, Blackberry Bliss, Petal Pink, Basic White cardstock
Everyday Skies, Floral Delight, Three Color glimmer, Toadstool Gardens, Beautiful Bokeh DSP
Playing in the Rain bundle
Sending Love bundle
Stampin’ Blends
Bright Skies, Friends for Life dies
Industrial Trinkets, purple sequins, heart sequins
Dimensionals
Adhesives

Product List