happy valentine's day...

I made these Valentine's for GQ's class.  I wanted to make something for the class rather than giving candy along with the card.  I'm sure they'll each receive their fill of candy from all the other kids in the class.  

I happened upon this Valentine's Day card idea on Pinterest and knew that it would be perfect for GQ's class!  She provided a PDF file for the card but I wanted to make mine a little different so did my own thing.  It also allowed me to customize the message for those friends that aren't in GQ's class.  

It is such a cute idea.  We customized the colors of the girls and boys bracelets.  I was going to actually knot each friendship bracelet but it began to be too time consuming.  Instead, we braided the students bracelets and did a fancier one with all the colors used for both the boys and girls bracelets for GQ's teacher.  

Super-easy project and no candy/sugar involved!

Happy Valentine's Day

Made this sweet little 2-5-7-10 box for GQ's little friend. You can find directions for this box here. It's the perfect size to hold a few pieces of candy or little trinket.

elements:
cardstock: Stampin' Up
ribbon: misc scrap
marker: Copic

So I lied...

I do have three more valentines to show you. They're so sweet and so cute! This is it...I promise!

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is it, the last Valentine's post! I won't bore you with details, just a couple pictures of a pretty card!

Happy Valentine's Day!

For the husband...

I'm safe posting this card, because chances are, the husband won't be reading this anytime soon. We don't make a big deal out of Valentine's Day at our house. I always make a card for GQ and the husband, but that's about it. This year I found a cute little something to slip into the husband's card...it was totally his sense of humor and it was less than $10, so no big deal.

Masculine cards seem to be the bane of my existence...I can make them but they don't come easily. I've been putting the making of this card off for a week or more because I was stumped. Valentine's Day is so pink and red and flowers and hearts...not what the husband would want on his card. This morning I had a light bulb moment and remembered I had a cupcake stamp (well, it's a Bella stamp, but I cut the Bella off after I stamped the image.) If you know my husband you know that he could pretty much live on sweets, so a cupcake was perfect for him!

I'm really liking the simplicity of the card and the dimension. I had some awesome Basic Grey patterned paper, it's red but the graphic design is much more masculine than the red hearts paper I have. I paper pieced the cupcake wrapper to match the panel on the card base. To add more dimension I used some Liquid Applique to puff up the frosting. I didn't want to add any more color or patterns to this card, so I embossed my scalloped circle for some texture and to make it pop off the card base a little. Tie a ribbon and add a little doodling line and sentiment and that was it! Easy and possibly one of my favorite cards in a long time.

Making a sweet treat even sweeter...

This Valentine's Day we're passing out candy hearts to some of GQ's little neighbor friends. Because the plain box just wasn't working for me we made these cute little jackets for them. It was a nice little project that started out me and GQ and ended up just me. I'm not complaining because I sometimes (ok, most times) have trouble sharing my crafty toys with GQ.

The jackets were created using scraps of paper, ribbon and a box of candy hearts. I've seen jackets or wraps made for candy boxes before on SplitCoastStampers and my friend Karie is a pro at it...the gifts she makes for her kiddo's teachers are adorable! I didn't have a template or pattern w/measurements to follow so GQ and I just measured the box, cut and scored the paper and it all worked out. It really was easy and I think I might have figured out an easier way to do it but that light bulb moment didn't happen until I was tying the last knot in the ribbon. Next time I'll be much faster at making these...you really could put something like this together for a classroom of kids in no time. You could assign the ribbon/bow tying to your kiddos, their small fingers work much better for tying those bows and knots!

Countdown to Valentine's Day

It's hard to believe we're counting down to Valentine's Day already...wasn't it just Christmas? Where does the time go?

This month can be pretty busy for me card making wise. I make little valentines to send to Gavin's cousins and some friends, we have my mom's birthday, my niece's birthday, my grandparent's anniversary and my father-in-laws birthday. That's a lot of cards! Thankfully I went to a crop last week and got several done, so I have all my cards completed! Yay!

My niece was born on Valentine's Day, so of course she gets lots of stuff with hearts and reds and pinks. In keeping w/that tradition this is her birthday card! It's made from paper scraps from my stash, except for the card base. The patterned paper is actually Christmas paper but worked well for Valentine's Day. The ribbon, and don't laugh at me, is ribbon I popped into my pocket after unwrapping silverware at a holiday party. (I came home with about 10 of them, thank goodness my shirt was long enough to cover my bulging pockets!) It's all about recycling! LOL! The hearts were cut from some chipboard I received in paper pack to keep from bending and then I cut the hearts again out of the patterned paper to cover. They're applied with dimensional adhesive to really pop off the card. Lastly I added some Stickles to polka dots to make it a little sparkly. Pretty, pretty!

Holy moly! I just realized I haven't made a Valentine's card for the husband...I'll get working on that and post later this week.

A sweet little Valentine...

My GOOD friend Karie created a pretty Valentine and I love it so much I wanted to CASE (copy and share with everybody!) it. I didn't have the exact stamp set and I wanted to make a 3x3 card so I could get eight cards out of one piece of 12x12 cardstock, but the idea is the same. I think I'm going to use these for GQ to send to his little cousins for Valentine's Day.

For once, I'm ahead of the game...

I don't normally have my Valentine's Day cards made this early. It's usually a day or two before. But I had some ideas in my head and needed to get them on paper before mommy-brain kicked in and I forgot!

I made all of the cards with paper scraps, no freshly cut paper here. For the Hearts & Kisses card I used jewelry wire to create the hanger and attached using some metal glue. It was much easier than what I thought it'd be. The Love cards were made using patterned-paper and felt scraps that my sweet friend Paula gave to me. I found a nice quote for the inside of the card and the flowered paper Paula gave me went perfectly with it. (so did the felt, I love the color combo!)

"Love is the only flower that grows and blossoms without the aid of the seasons."
- Kahil Gibran

I stitched the word Love onto the felt with embroidery floss. I figured out an easy way to sew onto felt or fabric with any freehand wording or art. I'm probably a bit late to game figuring this out, but in case you're wondering how I did it, I'll share... I cut a piece of scrap cardstock slightly smaller than my felt. Then free handed the word Love onto it in marker. Next, I used a paper piercer to punch holes along the word. Lastly, I used adhesive to place on the back side of my felt and stitched away. Having the cardstock on the felt made it much easier to work with; otherwise I would have been fighting between my length of floss and floppy felt. It was sew simple!

Some scraplings...

Are these little scraplings cute or what? They're smaller than they look, 1.25" x 4.25" to be exact. I first saw them on Hero Arts and Jennifer McGuire's blogs. They started as a way to use the scraps of paper left over after making a 4.25" square card.

Scraplings are on the small side and not really great for mailing; they'd almost get lost in a standard A2 envelope. I think I remember reading that some people included them in a birthday card as a little bonus gift and/or use them as gift bag tags to go along w/the card they just made.

Since I rarely make square cards, I rarely have that size scraps, but I did think of a great use for scraplings...Valentine's Day cards. You can make eight scraplings out of one 8.5" x 11" piece of cardstock! So their economical, too. And a little bonus...the white on my scrapling is an address label. I printed the sentiment on my computer, then added my little touches and peeled off the backing to stick on my card. So simple! It would be a great project for you and your kiddos to put together!

These eight cards went together so quicly and everything but the address labels was made from my scrap stash. So I am going to challenge you to make some scraplings and show them off. They can be any theme, just be sure to post a link in the comments so we can check them out.

Can't wait to see your creations!