Monthly Paper Pumpkin Tip: Sacrifice Your Envelopes

If you’re not familiar with what a Paper Pumpkin is, it’s a monthly subscription for an all-inclusive paper crafting kit made by Stampin’ Up, and one of my favorite things to receive in the mail. You can learn more about Paper Pumpkin and subscribe for the kit here.

This month’s tip for extending your creative options with your kit is to sacrifice your envelopes. Sometimes the cards in the Paper Pumpkin kit come with matching envelopes. Don’t be afraid to flay those envelopes open and cut them into mini-sheets of coordinating designer paper. Here’s an example from the July 2020 Paper Pumpkin Summer Nights add-on kit, which consisted of extra card bases and coordinating envelopes.

First, I used my paper trimmer to cut along the edges of the envelope where the white from the envelope meets the pattern on the inside of the envelope.

Next, I splayed open the envelope and trimmed the white part from the bottom of the pattern.

Finally, I cut the envelope at the crease between the flap and envelope.

After that, I cut the pieces into strips, applied them to a Night of Navy card base, and created the card pictured below using the stamp set and pieces from the Summer Nights kit.

Here’s a small slideshow of other cards I have made using the interior designs on the envelopes as elements on the front of the card.

Of course, you’ll need a replacement envelope, so keep a package of extras on hand. See my Monthly Paper Pumpkin Tip: A Little Product Supplement Goes a Long Way for information about basic supplemental supplies.

January 2021 Paper Pumpkin: Sending Hearts

Paper Pumpkin is an all-inclusive monthly subscription paper-crafting from Stampin’ Up and I look forward to receiving it every month. The January 2021 kit is called Sending hearts. The kit included all the supplies needed to make the cards pictured above and the photopolymer stamp set pictured below. It also included a Poppy Parade mini ink pad. The coordinating colors are Poppy Parade, Basic Black, and Petal Pink.

Today I’m sharing a few alternative designs that I made using the kit and supplemental supplies.

On this card, I repeatedly stamped the XOXO stamp on a white card base. I also added a piece of Petal Pink vellum and metallic edge Petal Pink ribbon from my stash of retired paper products.

For this card, I stamped the top portion of a white card base with the Love stamp. The bottom red panel is cut from one of the card bases included in the kit. The scalloped black border is punched from a border punch I have, but you can just as easily piece together two of the scalloped black strips from the kit. I offset a square of white vellum behind the front panel to give it more emphasis.

This next card utilizes the cute little snail stamp. I used a technique to reverse the stamped image so the snails could be facing one another. The reverse technique is very simple. Stamp the image on a silicon crafting mat and place a piece of cardstock over it, lightly pressing down without wiggling the paper. If you don’t have a silicon crafting mat, a silicon baking mat can be used instead.

Happy stamping and Happy Valentines Day!