Be My Valentine??

I have an enigmatic love for Valentine's Day cards.  I mean, I haven't had a huge number of people to make Valentines for since I was in elementary school.  Yet, every year, I still find myself wildly attracted to all of the new Valentine's Day paper-crafting products available in the stores.  (I'm in love with all of the heart-themed home decorating stuff, too, but that's a whole 'nother blog post.)  And, usually I end up buying a few new things and making waaaaay more Valentine cards than one gal could ever need or use.

As far as this year, let me just say that if you haven't been to Michael's lately, you should definitely go!  They have a fantastic selection of Valentine products out this year, from new paper pads to 3-D embellishments to sparkly rhinestones in pinks and reds.  I went a little bit overboard this year and bought lots of new stuff, so I thought I might as well showcase some of my recent cards here on my blog.

The two cards in the top photo are among my favorites, mostly because I love that green checked paper from K&Co.  It's from a pad of papers designed by Kelly Panacci, and I used the same pad for almost all of the cards featured in today's post.  The green checked paper is already printed with cute swirls and flowers along the sides and bottom of each sheet, so these cards were a simple matter of cutting the paper in an attractive way and adding a few additional embellishments, such as dimensional flowers with sparkly centers and 3-D greeting labels.  Oh, for the card on the left, I used my newest Martha Stewart edge punch.  It's called the Loop Double Edge Deep Edge Punch (say THAT five times in a row!), and I had coveted this great punch for literally months before I actually broke down and bought it.  And now, boy am I glad that I did!  It works great and punches very easily, even through thin cardstock.  It's pretty intricate, so I'm guessing that it won't go through super heavy cardstock, but I'm fine with that. 

 

 Here are a couple more cards, where I incorporated some of my new purchases with some scraps and older things I had lying around.  The bird stamp is from Michael's as well, it's one of their wood-mounted $1 stamps.  The bird's body makes the shape of a heart, perfect for Valentine's Day!  For this particular image, I stamped with waterprook black ink and used regular old watercolor paints to color it.  I used that edge punch again, too, and gave it a different look by adhering a strip of narrow ribbon right down the center.  Below is a close-up of the 3-D key sentiment on the card on the right.  Oh, and I could get away with the circles of green dotted paper (cut from scraps) because that multi-heart paper actually has some pale green hearts in it, although they are difficult to see in these photos. 

 

Above are a couple more cards that feature mostly my new supplies, although the puffy heart embellishments on the card on the right are actually from my stash.  The package has some crazy colors of hearts in it, so up til now, I hadn't used too many of them.  But, as it turns out, they go great with some of the papers in my new Kelly Panacci pad.

For whatever reason, I am still loving banners and flags on both cards and scrapbook pages.  I suppose they've been done to death, but I'll confess that I'm not tired of them yet.  I saw the basic design for the card on the right in the January/February issue of Paper Crafts magazine, and what caught my eye was that the flags were different shapes and sizes.  So I played around with the design a bit and came up with these two cards.  The sparkly flowers are Jolee's, and they are currently one of my favorite card embellishments.  They seem to go with everything!  Oh, and the red rick-rack is a leftover bit from a sewing project that I'm currently working on.  I hope to show the finished item here on my blog very soon.  

So, let me know.  Are you as crazy about as Valentine's Day as I am?  In parting, I'll tell you one thing that I do that actually helps me use all of the Valentines that I make almost every year.  I don't stamp or print any sentiment on the INSIDES of my cards.  Instead, I leave the insides blank, so they're more like notecards.  I have a couple of people in my life that I send snail mail to on a regular basis, and making my Valentines into notecards allows me to get a lot more use out of them.  And since I'm trying to be more frugal these days, along with everyone else, that makes me happy. 

Quick, Inexpensive Mini Album

Last week, I posted some Valentines I'd made using mostly items from the dollar bins at Target. Well, I'm kind of continuing that theme in my post for today, which is of course Valentine's Day.

I happen to have a friend whose birthday is on Valentine's Day, and I wanted to do a little something for her this year. She is one of those people who tends to get a little bit "blue" in the winter, waiting for the snow and the cold to go away. So I thought maybe a mini-album with a few photos of her family might be just the thing to keep her spirits warm.

I used one of the chipboard mini-albums that you can find all the time at Michael's these days for one measly dollar -- the book I chose is shaped like big tags. Since I didn't have die cut paper to go along with the book, I figured the tag shape would be relatively easy to trace and cut out. I started with a package of 12x12 Valentine-themed scrapbook papers and a package of matching chipboard embellishments from, once again, the Target dollar spot. There were, I think, twelve sheets of paper in that package -- for ONE DOLLAR! And, the patterns were actually pretty cute and useable. I simply traced the tag shape on the back of various papers, and then traced a bunch of additional half tag shapes, so that I could feature two papers on each layout of the album.

When I make quickie gift albums like this, I like to follow a simple format. Here, I combined two patterned papers on each layout, then put a family related quote on the left side, and a picture or two (cropped, of course) on the right. I added some simple rub ons to some of the little chipboard tags that were in the embellishment package (some were printed, but others were blank), and stuck everything down with glue dots. Here is an example of one of the layouts inside the mini album:


And another inner layout:


If you aren't familiar with how to cover chipboard with patterned paper, it's easy. I applied my hand-cut papers to each chipboard "page," and then sanded the edges to take off any excess and to make the paper kind of blend right into the page base. After sanding, I brushed all the paper bits off and then inked all of the edges with a dark brown chalk ink pad. For the "border" or shorter papers, make sure to ink the cut edge that will be on the inner part of the page before you stick the piece down. Oh, I had originally planned to use one of my cute edge punches on the edges of the "border" papers, but I tried it and it just looked too busy with the already-busy paper, so I simply cut the "border" papers straight instead. It still gave a nice contrast.

For the cover, I simply printed out a title block, inked everything, added a small photo, one of the chipboard hearts, and part of a circle rub on, and I was done. I liked the way this heart looked hanging off of the cover page:

I finished off the album by tying some cute ribbons onto the album's binder ring.


And that's it! A cute gift album that took me maybe a couple of hours from start to finish, and cost $3 plus a trip into my scrap ribbon bag and my rub on drawer. Besides the fact that I know my friend will love this little keepsake, I'm pretty proud of myself for using one of those chipboard albums from Michael's! I've got ones in every single shape and just don't use them as often as I'd like. But, as you can see, they really do make fun, inexpensive gift albums.

8 Valentines, 2 Bucks

My mom always sent all three of us kids Valentines, even after we were grown up and married and had long ago left home. Sometimes she slipped $5 in there, too, just for fun. It was just one of those sweet, loving things she did. She sent us little Easter baskets filled with goodies each year, too. Anyway, partly, no doubt, due to my mom, I have always had an especially warm spot in my heart for Valentine's Day. Not so much as a day to be all romantic with my hubby (although that's fun, too), but more as an opportunity to tell those I'm close to that I love them. So, I usually make some sort of little Valentine cards or notes each year, and then on the big day, I slip them in my kids' lunchboxes, leave them in sneaky places for co-worker friends (uh, female co-worker friends only, I don't need any rumours floating around the office that I've got an unrequited love for one of my male co-workers), and leave one where my hubby will be sure to see it in the morning.

So, I went down to my craft room a few nights ago and started digging out Valentine's stuff. I found a package of eight generic note cards with hearts on them (and red envelopes!) that I'd found at the Target dollar section, and I also pulled out a set of cheapie chipboard embellishments that I'd also found there. I grabbed my envelope of scraps in the pink and red color category, and I was ready to go. I just starting playing around with the the stuff and making some very simple, but cute, cards. Four of those are pictured above. Ok, I just noticed that on the card on the top left, the little line of chipboard hearts managed to detach itself during the scanning process. I'm too lazy to rescan, so please just picture that line of hearts right underneath the "so sweet" sentiment, where it's supposed to be, okay? The other four Valentines are below:


As you can see, in addition to scraps, I used some rub-ons from my large rub-on collection, along with a few mini-brads. The pen-stitching on some of the cards was done with my white Signo Uni-ball pen, the BEST white pen in the world. At the moment, the cards are blank inside, but I may stamp a simple sentiment in some of them before giving them away. Others, I'll leave blank so that I can add a newsy note to a friend inside.

As I finished up this little project (which took me maybe a couple of hours, start to finish), it hit me. I now had eight cute Valentines, at a total cost of ... 2 bucks! Well, 2 bucks plus odds and ends from my scrap drawer and a few rub-ons. How's that for cost efficiency?

Anyway, the point of this post isn't necessarily for you to copy my designs for Valentine cards, although you're certainly welcome to do that if you want to. The point is to keep your eye out for inexpensive, versatile card-making supplies when you find yourself at places like Target and Michael's. When I initially bought the chipboard set, I thought I might use the cupcakes on a birthday page or something like that, but I love how they really spruced up these Valentine designs. Both Target and Michael's almost always have sets of simple (notice I said simple, not necessarily plain) notecards in their dollar bins, and I encourage you to look at these gems in a new light. Think of them as bases that you can build your own cards on -- a great start on a set of themed notecards, with just the addition of a few embellishments or bits of paper and letters. When we see, in particular, printed notecards (like the heart ones I used for my Valentines), we tend to think of them as complete, finished products. And of course, they can be used that way. But adding a few handmade touches to commercially produced cards is a quick way to personalize them, spruce them up, and make them lots more special. And who doesn't love getting a handmade card in the mail?