Happy Valentine's Day

It's been quite a while since I've blogged, but my good friend Linda told me about a fun challenge at the Die Cut Divas Challenge Blog. So I decided to join in.

This month's challenge is to make a fun fold card. I have to admit I think I've only ever made a couple of fun fold cards before, but after making one for the challenge, I think I'll be making lots of different kinds of fun fold cards from now on. So the card I made, using a z fold design, is a Valentine for my hubby.

Die - Renaissance Heart Fancy Die (Hero Arts), Stamp - Celebrate Everyday (Hero Arts) and Paper - Romantic Patterned Scrapbook Paper (Crelando)

I have a few different heart dies in my stash but one of my favourites is a Hero Arts die called Renaissance Heart Fancy Die. For this card I die cut the heart from silver glitter card and backed it with a light pink pearlescent card.

The z fold base was so quick and easy to make by just scoring the front of the card down the centre and folding it back on itself.

I used paper from a paper pad I found in Lidl over a year ago to cover the card front and inside. I left the centre panel blank so I could write my message on it. The sentiment was heat embossed using Versamark and silver embossing powder.

I thought the sweet little sparkly birds were so cute. There's lots more sparkle on the card but we've had cloudy day after cloudy day here since I've made the card, so I didn't capture it very well in the photos.

A Couple of Valentines

For the past number of weeks a few things have completely taken up my time and kept me away from card making but I'm happy to be finally back in the swing of things again to make a Valentine for my hubby. I ended up making two Valentine cards as I thought the first one might be too girly for him. The little glimpse below probably says it all really:)

I had some pretty wedding table sprinkles in my stash and thought they, along with some beads and pearls, would make a nice background for a couple of lovely die cuts my friend Linda sent me - thanks again Linda:) So the card came together fairly quickly once the glue I used for the sprinkles and beads had dried. This month's challenge over at Hero Arts is Fabulous Flowers so since there are flowers on the heart die and flowers in the sprinkles I'm submitting this card into the challenge.

Dies (Hero Arts) - Floral Heart Stamp & Cut by Lia and My Monthy Hero January Kit Add On

After making the card above I thought I'd try to make a more masculine looking Valentine using a favourite Hero Arts die and the inlaid die cutting technique.

Dies - Renaissance Heart (Hero Arts), Bundle of Stitched Shapes (Simon Says Stamp) & Alphabet (Docrafts)

Even though I was going for a masculine look I couldn't resist using glitter card in the heart to represent the sparkle hubby brings to my life - sorry for the soppiness but I think I can get away with it this week:)

I'm submitting the cards into A Blog Named Hero's is A Bit of Sparkle Challenge and the Die Cut Diva's Love, Marriage and Anniversaries Challenge.

Scrap Busting for a Valentine

Happy New Year, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. We had a great one but it went by way too quickly.

This year I hope to do as much scrap busting as possible. I have folders full of patterned scraps, plain scraps and distress ink or experimental scraps left over from other projects and hope to reduce the pile considerably by the end of the year. So I pulled out some of my distress ink scraps in rainbow colours to make this card.

Distress inks - barn door, spiced marmalade, mustard seed, mowed lawn, salty ocean and dusty concord

Last week I got Hero Arts Renaissance Heart die and couldn't wait to make something with it! So I die cut the heart in black and then in rainbow colours, added a large sticky label behind it and after trimming used the inlay technique to complete the heart.

Dies - Renaissance Heart (Hero Arts), Bundle of Stitched Shapes (Simon Says Stamp)
Stamp - Celebrate Everyday (Hero Arts)

The stitched background was die cut using the rectangle from Simon Says Stamp Bundle of Stitched Shapes and the sentiment is from Hero Arts Celebrate Everyday set. The card is for my hubby so in order to keep it as masculine looking as possible resisted all temptations to add sequins, gems, or any other bits!

As I used something new in my crafty stash I'm submitting this card into Simon Says Stamp's Something New Challenge and a2zscrapbooking's New to You Challenge. I'm also submitting it into The Die Cut Divas Anything Goes Challenge.