Simple Valentine's Day Card

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day! Mine was great! Can't remember when was the last time we celebrated but yesterday was fun. Valentine's doesn't have to be elaborate, and so the card I made is as simple as it gets too. I do love how it turned out though. I've been doing lots of coloring on my cards lately, images, that it's a welcome change to do a clean and simple card.

R35, R37, R39

G40, G43

I used Taylored Expression's Wreath of Love, colored it with Red and Green Copics and added some Nuvo Crystals to make the dots. I did a little brush of clear glitter on the hearts too. I lettered the sentiment myself and kept it as simple as possible.

Hope you all had fun yesterday!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hello everyone! You didn't think I'd let this day slide without at least sharing some Valentine's Day cards did you? Of course not! I actually made these weeks in advance, but had not had the chance to properly photograph them so that was my last minute to do on this project.

Here are the cards I've done, mostly made with paper from the Heartstrings paper collection from Close to My Heart. These are retired papers, and since I've got a bunch leftover from last year, I thought I'd put them to good use again this year.

Here's a slightly altered version, with the hearts not having the white background. Can't tell which version I like better, but both are pretty I think.

Here's using the Heartstrings assortment button and complements.

And this once with the Poppy extra thick twine to tie it all together.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Hope you all had a great day filled with love!

Marci Sending Loads of Love

Hi everyone! Here's another Marci card from me and this time I colored Marci using Spectrum Noir Blendable Color Pencils! I have all 5 sets and let me tell you this is by far my favorite set of color pencils. I do have Prismacolor too, but I find the Spectrum Noir pencils to be so much better. There are different techniques and my favorite is using gamsol to blend the colors.

I used Sending word die from Simon Says Stamp, and the sentiment from Just A Love Note stamp set.

Hair - Essentials Set - 095, 091, 089

Skin - Essentials Set - 005, 004, 003

Clothes, Shoes, Hair Piece - Primaries Set - 029, 035, 034

Heart Banner - Florals Set-  028, 025, 023

Oh my gosh! I actually did it! I was able to list down all the colors I used! Well I hope that helps!

Enjoy!

Heartstrings

Valentine's Day has come and gone, and I'm still stuck on this beautiful Heartstrings paper! I created 12 different kinds of cards using the Heartstrings Workshop on The Go. I love how versatile 1 paper can go, and how many different kinds of designs you can come up with.

Here's the additional stamp set I used.

C1604 Forever In My Heart

The Heartstrings line and the stamp set is only available until end of March as part of Seasonal Expressions 1, so if you want it now's your last chance to get your hands on them!

Love Love Love!

S.W.A.L.K. Valentine's

Crafter's Companion used to have these S.W.A.L.K. and Humphrey's Corner Collection stamps and I love how cute they are. I also love using these stamps when I'm in the mood for some serious coloring. I've recently purchased these Chameleon pens and have been practicing on getting the hang of how to blend using a single pen. Since it's Valentine's and these stamp sets are screaming to be used, I figured I'd make some Valentine's Day cards to go with the season.

This is the Humphrey's Corner Collection - Flowers For You

This is the Humphrey's Corner Collection - Hugs For You

S.W.A.L.K. - Love You

S.W.A.L.K. - Quackers

I hope you enjoy them! Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Love Card

Here's one of the Valentine's Day card I made using Close to My Heart Heartstrings paper. I used a Silhouette image to cut this lacy layer on the front of the card. I love the simplicity of the card, yet the intricate cut makes it classy looking.

Happy Hearts Day everyone!

Valentine's Day Tags for the Classroom

This year I'm actually early and not scrambling to make my daughter's Valentine's Day card for her class. I did something very simple this year, which is to just print and cut using my Silhouette Cameo.
I purchased these really cute printable files from Jamie Cripps, printed them on my printer and the Silhouette Cameo did the rest. It was supposed to be a quick and easy project, but the new Silhouette software seems to make everything harder. I wasted so much printer ink and cardstock, because it would perfectly print and cut one page, then after loading the next, it won't cut right. I tinkered with calibration and registration marks to no avail, and finally found the only solution was to keep shutting the machine off, restart the Silhouette studio software and do it all over again. That trick seemed to do it and I was then able to create the rest pretty easily.

Unfortunately I have to admit, I don't use the highest quality ink, thus the washed off kinda look. Either way, it's just for my daughter's class and something for the kids to enjoy. I hope you do too. 

Valentine's Day Card

It's my first time to participate on a challenge and I thought I'd join the fun over at Kiwi Lane. This is their card sketch, and I thought I'd use one of my favorite papers - Ivy Lane. I love the romantic look of this paper pack. It's retired, but I still have some left to use for cards.

And here's my version of the card. I'm not sure how these challenges work, but I took it to mean creating a card that looks like the sketch. I used Ivy Lane papers, Hollyhock cardstock for the heart, and embossed it with a Cricut embossing folder Juli's Garden and distressed it to show the white core. I embossed the buds of the flower with Cricut embossing folder Swiss Dots, inked the edges with Hollyhock ink and topped it with Heartstrings Assortment. The sentiment was stamped using Happy To Be Friends stamp set. I used Sincerely card borders, and Tiny Sweetheart set for the heart and flower.

Thanks to Kiwi Lane for the inspiration. I have to admit I haven't been using my templates much lately so this is a welcome refresher!

You've Got Mail!

Here's a sample of some images I colored with the Chameleon pens. I used Taylored Expressions You've Got Mail - Valentine for these cards. Since I'm still in experimenting mode, I stamped a couple to play with, and in the end just made them into cards.

As you can see I kind of lost control on the post between blending. The downside to blending using just 1 pen is the many times I have to put the pen in contact with the toning chamber. It's trial and error on how long it takes before you can color the entire image you want with the amount of lightness you need. As you can see, somewhere halfway through the pole, I had to re-ink again. For small images like the birds, it's not a problem. The sentiment is from Simon Says Stamp.

This card uses the same stamp set from Simon Says Stamp, I just added the border, but my big mistake was using Wink of Stella glitter brush pen. I squeezed it too hard thus instead of just highlighting the border, I kinda made a mess of it. The "love" is a die from Taylored Expressions.

Enjoy!

CTMH Wild About Love

Here is my February's SOTM creation. It admit it is my first time to use CTMH products (inks and stamps) + Cricut die cut shapes, even acrylic blocks! I had a bit of a hard time stamping so please forgive the inconsistencies. I absolutely love this stamp! The fox designs are so cute! Since Valentine's Day is over, I thought I'd skip the I Love You's and create something different.

I used ordinary white  card stock as my base, then some tan paper from Heritage. I added in this beautiful colorful and flowery card stock from Ki's Growing Garden paper pad. I stamped the foxes with CTMH Exclusive Inks Hollyhock. I stamped on the female fox once, and twice over on the male just to get a darker shade. I used Cocoa ink on the tree bark and Wild Thing stamp. I used Cricut Artiste Philosophy to cut the tag. I then used a regular brown pen to put the faux stitch lines on the top and bottom as borders.

Here is the complete image of this month's Stamp of the Month.

Close to My Heart February 2014 SOTM

Hope you all like it!

By the way, if you'd like to get your hands on this stamp set, it's only $5 if you purchase $50 worth of CTMH goodies!

Critters Galore!

Valentine's day is just a couple of days away and I'm scrambling to make cards for my daughter's class. I chose to do critters so the kids will appreciate it and at the same time hopefully becomes a 'tool' to learn animals. She's turning 2 soon and the toddlers in her class are in that stage of learning animals and sounds they make. It took so much time to put these together, but it was well worth it! My daughters reaction was of pure glee when she saw these critters, and we had fun identifying them too.
Cricut's Create a Critter 2 cartridge is so much fun to use! The animals are so cute! The themes are also perfect for Valentine's Day! I should make a mental note to use them more often, even for other occasions. I underestimated the time it takes to create these. Now I know better and hopefully can plan ahead the next time!
Enjoy!