This Storybook Moments Village Gate Fold Card is made with the pretty Storybook Moments Specialty Designer Series Paper. You will find this paper and entire Suite in the Spring Mini Catalog. I had the idea of putting the patterned paper with little cottages on it on the inside of this card. When I looked at the diecut sheets and saw these two characters, I thought they looked like the lady and lord of the manor on the inside of the card!
This is called a gate fold card because the two sides of the card fold in and meet in the middle. There is nothing complicated about it! To make this card base, cut the Old Olive cardstock at 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″ as always. Then score at 2 1/8″ from each horizontal end so that those two ends fold and meet in the middle. The inside panel will measure 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″. When you fold in the two side panels to the center they should meet up perfectly. If they overlap a tiny bit which prevents them from laying flat, just trim as slightly as you can with your Paper Trimmer to help them fit next to each other.
On the inside center panel, I adhered the paper on the Storybook Moments DSP that has images of lots of little cottages. It looks like a little scene when you open the card. That paper would be 4″ x 5 1/4″. On the outside folded side panels, the DSP is cut at 1 7/8″ x 5 1/4″. This designer paper is “the other side” of the paper that has all sorts of different frames and designs in rectangles that can be cut apart to use on cards or scrapbook pages. As you can imagine, it was very difficult to cut into that paper to use the other side and ruin some of the images on the “main” side. But I really liked this leafy side so I gritted my teeth and cut into the paper! Sometimes you have to do hard things! 
The center panel is a piece of Old Olive cardstock cut at 3 1/2″ x 3 1/2″. You can vary the size for your card if you want it smaller or a different shape. The layer on top is Flirty Flamingo 3 1/4″ x 3 1/4″. It happens to be an embossed piece of scrap cardstock in the package, embossed with a retired folder called Scripty. I decided to use it because I liked the little bit of texture it provided in the background, even though it is retired.
The two sheep characters on the square panel are images you will find on the pages of diecuts that coordinate with this Storybook Moments Designer Paper. That is why it is called “Specialty” paper because it has these extra two sheets of all kinds of diecut images, ready to go! These two “lords of the manor” are just glued flat to the card although you could pop them up on Dimensionals. They fit just right on that square.
The greeting is stamped from the Layers of Beauty Stamp Set which I haven’t used for awhile and almost forgot about. You will find it in the Stampin’ Up! Annual Catalog. I stamped it on a narrow strip of Basic White cardstock and flagged both ends. To help it work just a little better with the card, I sponged the edges very lightly with Old Olive ink and an old piece of sponge I had that Stampin’ Up! used to sell. You could use Sponge Daubers or one of the Blending Brushes. We used to do this all the time when I started stamping and I rarely do it nowadays, but I think it is the perfect touch sometimes.
When you adhere this center panel to the card, you will adhere it to the left front panel. Only put glue on the left side of the square so that it doesn’t also stick to the right side panel. Sometimes it’s hard to remember not to put the glue everywhere! Don’t ask me how I know!
On the inside of the card, if the cardstock you used for the card base is rather dark, you might want to put plain cardstock on the inside of those side panels. I used Basic Beige which looks good with the cottage paper in the center. You can stamp a greeting or write a personal message on those plain inner panels. Or you could cut or diecut a plain piece for a greeting adhered to the inside center panel, even though it covers some of the cottages.
Any gate fold card similar to this one is easy to make so I hope you will try one!