Cards for Charity: Valentines

My friend Pam's church is wanting Valentines now to sell for their very worthy charities, and I made 10 of these for them.

 Honestly, when I made the first one, I thought I would not be able to make 10; but I figured out a way to do it more easily. These are all die cuts, and the heart is a silhouette type die that cuts holes into your paper, and leaves all of these pieces to either use or throw away. I wanted to use the pieces only on these cards, and sticking them all down in the right place was the challenge.

When I was working at Art 'n Soul, I did a lot of demo'ing. One of the techniques people liked to see was one I called "stencil stamping." It's a type of mono printing using stencils. You can see a tutorial of that here, and if you search for stencil stamping on my blog, you will see lots of samples where I use it. Basically, I use a piece of watercolor cardstock and rub distress ink directly from the pad onto the paper. Then, I take a stencil and spray it with water mixed with Perfect Pearls powder, and press the stencil onto the inked paper. That leaves a print of the stencil onto the paper.

In order to use these backgrounds for the Valentines, I applied Stick-It adhesive to the backs of each panel. I was able to get two sentiments and two hearts out of each panel, so I only needed 5 panels, and I had enough left over from my demos, in blue and pink and purple and pink.

After running it through the die cut machine, I left the paper in the die and turned it over. I removed the release paper from the backs of each of the individual pieces. I then turned it over onto a piece of white cardstock, and pressed a tool through each of the holes in the die to make sure the pieces would come out of the die and stick to the cardstock. I took off the die and rubbed my fingers over the entire piece to be sure the pieces would stay stuck down. 

After doing this several times, it got easier, and I got them all done in one night. Of course I die cut the panels with my favorite Crimped Frame die, and I matted each panel with pink cardstock.

I cut out the negatives of these and plan to make more cards from them. They still have the Stick It adhesive on the backs, so it should be easy to do something nice with them.

Products Used:

Simon Says Stamp S412 Corbel Heart die

Mama Elephant Happy Valentine's Day die

Distress Inks: Picked Raspberry, Peacock Feathers,

Wilted Violet

Perfect Pearls Pearl Powder

Tim Holtz Watercolor cardstock

Stick-It Adhesive

Stencil used on these is no longer in production, but you

can use any stencil that has about equal amounts of open area to solid

So Silk Beauty Pink cardstock

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I don't make a lot of Valentines, but I made two this year for a couple of friends that I thought would enjoy them. They are almost exactly alike.

The heart in this one was made from a panel of watercolor cardstock on which I had added Nuance powder in a variety of colors and sprayed. I particularly liked the spray pattern on this. Here's a close-up

The heart on the second card is from a panel that was stencil stamped

Here's a close up. I have posts about how to do stencil stamping here (scroll down), here and here amoung others.

Unfortunately the stencil I used on this heart is a Magenta one that was discontinued, but you can get the same look with any stencil that has about the same amount of negative and positive space. I used Picked Raspberry, Spiced Marmalade and Wild Honey Distress inks for this heart.

I cut these hearts out with the Hero Arts DI334 Nesting Hearts Infinity die set. I love this set! It has 10 heart dies, the largest being 4.66" x 4.11", and the smallest being .27" x .23". The hearts are a nice shape and the dies are open, so that you can place them on a colored panel to cut it in just the right place to capture the look you want.

The rectangular background panel is something that I already had in my stash. It illustrates ink blending over emboss resist. You can see this technique demonstrated in a previous post here. I made lots of panels where I stamped with Versamark ink, using a large background stamp, and embossed it with JudiKins Iridescent Sparkle embossing powder. You can't see it in these pictures, but what looks like white in the background is actually very very sparkly, almost like lines of glitter. It's beautiful in real life. You can also use other embossing powder for this technique, such as opaque white or White Diamond. 

The background panel that I had was 4" x 5.25" and I cut it in half and use half for each of these cards. The stamp I used on this panel was Impression Obsession CC024 Tapestry Cover a Card.

The Happy Valentine's Day sentiment was die cut with a Mama Elephant die out of glossy black cardstock on which I had applied Stick-It adhesive to the back.

The background strip, heart and sentiment were adhered to a panel of Neenah Solar White 80# cardstock that was die cut with the stitched rectangle die from Die-Namics MFT 643 Blueprints 13. This die cuts a rectangle that is exactly 4" x 5.25" and has a stitched edge. I matted the panel with a slightly larger piece of Stardream Flame cardstock, and the whole thing was mounted to a base card of Neenah Solar White 110# cardstock.

I hope you enjoyed these. I did a Zentangle square recently that I think I will make into a Valentine for my hubby. He didn't photograph this, so it's not a great picture, but here it is. I will probably add some color to it before it's turned into a card.

Products Used:

Magenta Nuance

Magenta Stencil TM79 (discontinued)

Hero Arts DI334 Nesting Hearts Infinity Dies

Mama Elephant Valentine's Day die

Die-Namics MFT 643 Blueprints 13 die set

Impression Obsession CC024 Tapestry Cover-a-Card

Distress inks: Picked Raspberry, Orange Marmalade, Wild Honey

Distress inks for background: Fired Brick, Orange Marmalade, Carved Pumpkin

JudiKins Iridescent Sparkle embossing powder

Versamark ink

Stick-It Adhesive

Tim Holtz Watercolor cardstock

Neenah Solar White 80# & 100# cardstock

Stardream Flame cardstock

Black glossy cardstock