I’ve been following The Twofer Challenge for a long time, but have never played along. Earlier this month when I saw February’s challenge: Balloons, I had an idea!

I’ve had a “never-before-used” die by My Favorite Things lying on my table for weeks. Originally, I planned to use if for an upcoming project, but ended up doing something very different and just didn’t get it put away. My only problem with this challenge was forgetting to check the rules before creating:

They are very clear–one die, two different designs, two different occasions. My first two cards were both birthday cards, so actually I have a Three-fer. But I’m not unhappy to have a third card in the stash. Here’s a look at the two cards for the challenge:

As you can see the die cuts the balloons and the greeting from a piece of cardstock. I then die cut that with a “Stitched Rectangle” and put metallic papers behind the balloons and the greeting and bumped it up on a white top-folded card. Have to say it looks great in real life, but is terrible to try and photograph.

Here you can see the shine, and the reflection from the windows!

To create the second card, I ran the die through the Gemini, Jr. two times and used five of the balloons. After coloring them with Copic markers, I added balloon strings from a Papertrey Ink stamp set and layered them into a bouquet of balloons. 

The sentiment (just perfect!) from Sugar Peas was embossed on black cardstock die cut from Papertrey Ink’s “Skinny Mini Banners,” and bumped up with some dimensional tape. The balloons are covered with a heavy coat from a Spectrum Noir glitter pen—also difficult to photograph. Here’s a close-up taken with my iPhone.

Finally the third card, just because I have it–and I do like it, too. I used the same technique and the same glittery finish for the balloons here.

I love the “Birthday Strings” mini-stamp from Papertrey Ink and it works perfectly here. I add a few raindrops to this card, as well as the die cut card as a final embellishment. I’m pretty sure I’ll be back to play along with The Twofer Challenge again, but I’m also sure I’ll remember the rules next time!

And because, I used a NBUS die, I’ll put this up at the February post there as well.

There’s a new fad in the card making world: mini slim lines, and I have to admit I’m a fan. I made nine mini slimline valentines, four I’m sharing today, and five tomorrow. Two of the four cards today are going to my daughter and son-in-law and my son and daughter-in-law. The other two went to good friends. They’re the “same, but different.” I have my favorites, and I wonder which ones you like the best.

All four of the cards were created with a new die from My Favorite Things, ” Heart Rays.” I die cut the heart in two shades of gray, red, black, and pink, and then pieced them together in different patterns.

To keep the design simple, I chose different patterned papers for the background and different colored card bases but that made the assembly easy.

As usual, figuring out exactly where I wanted the three enamel dots as embellishment took me the longest time. 

The sentiments, all white embossed on black, came from a variety of sentiment stamps in my collection. There was a time when I didn’t have many appropriate valentine sentiments. Once I started creating valentines for five grandchildren as well as friends and extended family I purchased a few more. Now I have plenty to choose from. 

I’m entering some of these in the following challenges: Happy Little Stampers Dies: Anything Goes and Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Slimline Cards.

Time Out posted a new photo challenge yesterday, and as soon as I saw it I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Here’s the fabulous photo:

My granddaughters are coming tomorrow to bake valentine cookies, and I wish ours would be this beautiful! But it wasn’t the cookies that attracted me as much as it was the colors and the patterns. I knew that Papertrey Ink’s Bitty Big papers would be great to replicate a couple of these hearts, and I have new floral dies from The Greetery to play with as well. I also wanted to make a valentine for a dear friend, so after dinner last night I sat down, and this is what I came up with:

I die cut three different sized hearts from the Bitty Big papers in Black and Pale Peony as well as some Pure Poppy with My Favorite Things “Stitched Hearts” dies. Then I die cut some of The Greetery’s BotaniCuts: Forget-Me-Not flowers from watercolor paper and sponged them with Pure Poppy and Pale Peony inks along with a couple of leaves sponged with New Leaf. Here’s a closer look at the pretty flowers.

I die cut both a white panel and a red panel with Ellen Hutson’s Essential Rectangles which cut the rectangle as well as the narrow frame. After mounting those on a white card base, I arranged the hearts and flowers and added the sentiment from Reverse Confetti’s “Crushin'” embossed in white on a strip of black cardstock.

It’s not often I get a card for a challenge created so quickly, but I need to deliver this to my friend tomorrow morning. I’ll be back again tomorrow with some more valentines for friends and on the big day with the valentines I made for family. 

It’s Valentine Week here on the blog. I have another one to share today, and hopefully, a few more before Valentine’s Day on Sunday. I’m sending (or delivering) more valentines than usual this year due to the pandemic and the fact that I can’t see my friends, several of whom live alone. 

Although I ended up liking this card a lot, it is a far cry from my initial design idea. Some of it happened because I wasn’t happy with the first dies I used, and then I made an error die- cutting the hearts which gave me a whole new basket of ideas. The card uses only two die sets, both new to me from the latest offering at The Greetery, “Shapely Hearts” and “Let’s Have a Word: Love.”

Without thinking, I first cut the “Shapely Heart” dies without cutting them apart, which gave me three hearts–one small whole heart, and two hearts with holes in them. That prompted the beginning of the card. After separating the hearts, I die cut the largest one from a piece of patterned paper in The Stamp Market’s “Miss Modern” collection. Then I added Distress Glitter to the medium-sized heart which had the small heart cut from within it.  That allowed the patterned paper to show through again. To add some dimension, I added foam tape to the glittery heart.

Then I die cut the love sentiment three times in black cardstock, adhered them together, and layered it over the hearts. The last design element was three scored lines on the top and bottom of the card. 

Sending this one off to three challenges. I’m entering this into Just Us Girls Challenge: Valentine. It’s a favorite challenge of mine, and this is my second entry. I’ve never played along with the  Happy Little Stampers Die Challenge: Anything Goes, but this card is nothing but dies! And, of course, the NBUS Challenge, whenever I break out new products!

The impetus for creating this valentine was the CASology Challenge: Envelope. In the end, my card may not be CAS enough, although I’m going to toss it into the ring anyway. It would have been just fine without the ink-splattered background layer, but I really loved how that looked, and went with it. 

I started out with the new-to-me die from Mama Elephant, “Botanic Envelope.” Then I started digging through the envelope of already die-cut hearts to see what I could find. In the same box with the envelope of hearts, is an envelope with already created background pieces where I found the ink-splattered rectangle. I ended up die cutting a few more hearts with a new Gemini die that came with my Gemini, Jr. — another unused die until now. 

I embossed in gold the sentiment from Sugar Peas ” Everyday Sentiments” on a strip of white paper and trimmed it out. 

Although this may not meet the requirements for a totally CAS card, it seems pretty clean to me, although maybe not simple enough! I know it will be just fine to enter it in the Paper Players Challenge: Hearts and/or Stars, and of course, it’s going to Darnell’s monthly NBUS Challenge. This may be the first time I’ve used the envelope die, but it certainly will not be the last!

As you might imagine, there are a lot of valentine and heart challenges open right now. I made this one, however, for the Color Throwdown Challenge, a challenge that often passes me by, and even this time, I’m linking up at the last minute. The colors were perfect for the candy hearts in an old Papertrey Ink stamp set.

Papertrey Ink’s “Friendship Jar” has long been a favorite and I have several versions of it. Today’s card uses the original “Friendship Jar” and the “Spring Fillers.”

The candy hearts are from the “Spring Fillers” set and I colored them with Copic markers. Then I die cut and stamped two versions of the mason jar, one plain and one with a window that I backed with acetate. I used some very thin strips of cardstock to add a little dimension between the top jar and the candies. Before adding it to the patterned paper layer (backed with foam for more dimension) I tied a piece of pink and white twine around the top of the jar.

The sentiment from Avery Elle’s “Seasonal Simple Sentiments” was stamped with The Stamp Market’s Fresh Pink ink. For a long time, I didn’t have many pinks to choose from, but The Stamp Market has great pinks, and I purchased three of the ink pads a year or so ago. The final touch was to add three tiny enamel hearts from Doodlebug Designs.

I’m also entering The Library Challenge which is “Jar of Hearts” (perfect!), Just Us Girls which is “Valentine,” and Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: “Love is in the Air.”