Valentine Greetings

Well, Christmas came and went before I had an opportunity to address and sign holiday greetings for our friends and family, so I decided to make up some Valentines to send out instead.

I had about 50 cards to make, so they needed to be quick and easy.  I haven't done any rubber stamping in a while, so it was fun to pull out all of my supplies.

First, the paper, including printed Valentine's paper I bought last month, vellum, and mulberry paper, which looks great behind a mounted image.

Inks are next...and I didn't just stick to pinks and reds.  Violet plays a role in Valentine cardmaking, too. And of course, a good black ink (Archival Jet Black by Ranger) and Versamark for embossing.

I have a box of stamped images that are left over from other projects and I searched through those for any images I could use.  And I dug through my boxes of embellishments to add some dimension to the cards, and I found a couple of stencils (lifted from store-bought cards) that I could use.

Can't do much without scissors and adhesives!
In addition to straight and decorative scissors, most of my cutting is done with a paper cutter.  The water-filled paint brush is great for coloring in designs using ink from the pads -- an added bonus is that is matches perfectly!  Judi-Kins duster brushes and a round sponge also come in handy for adding color to an image or the edges of cardstock.



My favorite adhesives are Tombow tape runner, Scrapbook Adhesives' vellum E-Z Runner and foam tape.

A long time ago, I needed an easy, space saving way to store my rubber stamps, and my local pizza place came through for me.  They gave me several new, clean boxes, which allowed me to sort the stamps by type -- specific holidays, background, greetings, etc.  It sure makes things easy to pull just one box of stamps out to work on my cards!

All of my Hearts and Valentines stamps in one box -- easy-peasy!

I made several of this first card, using a series of 'conversation' hearts stamps. After stamping them in a row (both vertically and horizontally) on white cardstock, they looked a little flat.  So I used Inkssentials Glossy Accents, applied directly over the image, to add some shine and dimension to one heart in the row.  After drying for a couple of hours, I layered the panel with some scalloped die-cut paper onto a card.

The 'rule of thirds' takes a role in this card.

Dividing the card in thirds makes it visually appealing.  In this case, the patterned paper takes up two-thirds of the card and the greeting takes up the top third.  A few stick-on crystals and pearls add a little bling.

The heart background paper in this next card looked very much like a stamp I had.

I stamped and embossed the image with red embossing powder on white cardstock, then trimmed it carefully following the outline of the heart.  The greeting was stamped on vellum.

This next card used the same stamp, but I trimmed around the center heart.  I really wanted the Valentine's paper to take center stage.

I managed to create a few more designs, but they were in envelopes and sealed when I started taking pictures.  My goal was to get them in the mail on Tuesday, February 11, but then a big snowstorm hit! Hopefully, even if they are late, these little greetings will be a welcome break from the weather!