Paper Pumpkin June 2026 Bikes and Blooms alternates

What a fun kit this is! I have to admit that the partial bikes kind of bugged me initially but it grew on me pretty quickly and I loved the florals combined with the bikes💕. I’ve made 3 alternate designs so far with a 4th in mind but not finished at this time. I’ll hopefully post that one later but I have to admit that I’m so behind on posting …! 

The first two designs (shown on the bottom of the photo above) are variations on a z-fold but given the direction of the bicycle half, I flipped the Z portion of one. Let me explain…first of all, I preferred adding a background to the bicycle so I pulled out some leftover DSP from the Thoughtful Journey pack. I loved the abstract landscapes and thought they’d be a perfect backdrop for the bicycle, without being too specific. They were perfect (or so I think). The standard z-fold has a front panel that is also 5.5”x4.25”. I cut the Thoughtful Journey DSP at 5.25”x4” then I adhered the large bicycle - which I purposely attached going to the right most edge of the card base! Then I added a grassy die cut in front of the bike. I stamped a bunch of small florals in the open spaces on the basket of greenery and stamped a birthday greeting on the sentiment label. The finishing touch was adding a little bird from the birds and butterflies embellishment pack.

 

Since the front panel is the full size of the card, the z-fold doesn't show unless you see the card from a  top view. I added a strip from the front panel DSP to bring it inside the card too:

For the second z-fold, I cut the full bicycle into two and fussy cut around it. Then I reversed the Z since it was just the back end of the bike and it didn’t take up the entire card front, I took advantage and used a smaller front panel. Again I used the Thoughtdul Journey DSP as a background, and added the grass die cut in front. I also stamped some birds flying in the sky, but it got hidden until you open the card. 

Again the finishing touch was a little bird from the birds and butterflies embellishment pack. Here's the "reverse" z-fold card from an aerial view. I decided to reverse the Z-fold because I wanted the cut off portion of the bicycle to be on the right edge of the card. You can also see the little birds stamped in the top left corner:

The third alt is a Thank you easel card and I used the sentiments from the Banner Sayings stamp set for both the focal sentiment as well as the stopper. Once again I added a Thoughtful Journey DSP panel to the background and stamped the flowers in the bike basket. 

When you open the card the stopper is a second sentiment:

Which left plenty of room above the sentiment to write a personal thank you message!

Thanks for stopping by....hope you like my alternate designs from this Paper Pumpkin kit. Have a wonderful day...

Lovely & Beautiful DSP fun fold

A shoutout of thanks to Rachel Tessman for her tutorial on this card design. It looks like a horizontal book binding card but when you open it, it twists around and becomes a vertical orientation card!! 

Here I'm starting to open it:

Opening it further...you can see how the front of the card is flipping...

And here it is, fully open:

Love love love this card design and of course this DSP pack has been a huge favorite of mine. I've used it in many a card! Thanks for stopping by...

Flowering Zinnia DSP cards - simple fun fold

I make a lot of cards for donation and depending on the organization I share my cards with, one has very strict rules about no embellishments. And because most of these organizations need lots of cards, I keep them fairly simple. But I still want them to look nice. And I always try to include a few simple fun folds in each batch.

I found a blog with a simple fold back fun fold but it was in metric. I tried to convert it to inches but had to tweak it a bit, plus one little size change as well. In the end, this is what I came up with and since this was back in April so I made a bunch of Mother's Day cards:

Card base: 4.25” x 11” scored at 1.5” and 5.5” Fold at the 5.5” line to create the basic card, then fold the  1.5” score line to the left so that the front of the card is shorter.

DSP panels: 3.25” x 4” qty 1 and  1.25”x4” qty 2 Attach the larger DSP panel on the left and the other two on the folded back area and on the “inside” of the card.

And here are close ups of each card: 

And as you can guess, this is a GREAT way to make a bunch of cards, as well as use up scraps and strips! Hope this inspired you to create some easy cards. Thanks for stopping by.