Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day–one of my fave holidays, and I’m glad to be home to celebrate it. We had a fabulous trip with lots of stories to tell. I’m hoping to get the trip photos edited in a much more timely fashion this time. But for now, I have some valentines to share. The first two went to Wisconsin before we left in a padded envelope to be held by my daughter until today. When I mailed the Halloween cards to them, Hannah’s came two days before Halloween, but Caleb’s arrived two weeks AFTER Halloween. Not going to let that happen again!

I recently picked up some sale items at Concord and 9th, and thought I could fashion a valentine for a 12 year-old boy (who wears glasses) from the Spectacular Shades die set with accompanying sentiments. 

I die cut strips from The Stamp Market’s 1/4″ Strips die in Green Parakeet, Bright Buttercup (Papertrey Ink), and Red Hot (Gina K Designs). To die cut the letters for the words, I used a variety of cardstock from my scrap boxes. The spectacles themselves were die cut four times from the Red Hot cardstock and layered. A layer of acetate was added first before adhering the letters. 

The sentiment was stamped with The Greetery’s Sentiment Suite: Love and die cut with My Favorite Things Itty Bitty Strips.  Here’s a peek at the inside of the card. The sentiment there is from the Concord and 9th set.

Last year I made the three Rochester girls valentines with the My Favorite Things Gnome Matter What stamps and dies. This year it was Hannah’s turn. I started out by creating a shaped card with Hero Arts Infinity Hearts die and adding a second smaller heart to the front. I stamped the greeting on the heart and then stuck a variety of glittery pink and red heart stickers all over it. The gnome, colored with Copics, is tossing hearts out of a bag. 

Here’s a peek at the inside of Hannah’s card. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink’s Just Sentiments: Valentine.

After seeing Jennifer McGuire’s card here, I knew I wanted to give it a try. All three granddaughters in Rochester gifted me with homemade pop-up cards for Christmas, so this seemed like a perfect time to return the favor.

It’s hard to photograph metallic and glitter papers, but it’s bit easier to see in the photo below.

The background is a new product from Gina K- Poly-Glaze Foiling Sheets: Tiny Hearts which I foiled with gold foil. I’ve owned a laminator for at least five years, and this was the first time I broke it out. Who knows why? It was so easy! The red glitter paper is from Gina K and the gold metallic is from Michael’s. I die cut the largest heart from cardstock so I could inlay all three of the hearts with the specialty papers. Here it is popped up. 

The three girls are also getting a goodie bag with a notebook, two Valentine pencils and a Target gift card. The Wisconsin grandchildren will find cash in their valentines today.

The die for the bags is another unused prodcut from The Stamp Market-Scalloped Gift Bag die, and the patterned papers were from my scrapbook paper stash. When I gave up scrapbooking (still regretting that decision a bit), I did save some of the holiday papers. 

Not too surprisingly there are still a couple challenges with heart related themes. I’ll be sending these to The Double D Challenge: Heartfelt, Inkspirational: Hearts, and to NBUS (of course) since I finally got my laminator out and did some foiling with the new Poly-Glaze sheets as well as using The Stamp Market’s Scalloped Gift Bags and Concord & 9th’s Spectacular Shades.