Aloha, all!
Not only is Valentine's Day less than a month away, but this year it's on a Sunday! That means that any last minutes cards have to be set to arive on the 13th of February. Where I live on Hawaii'a Big Island, it even takes at least one extra day for mail to get to its USA destination. So I'm really in a pickle if I don't get them done by February 8th, just shy of 3 weeks away!
As I'm sure you've noticed, I haven't been posting projects on my blog very often since the first of the year (before that?). It's not that I've been making cards and not posting them. It's that I've been working extra hard to get my newest Greeting Card Tutorial Booklet ready for sale! I'm almost there – I'd better be or I'm not going to be sending out many Valentine's Cards.
But today is the day that the biweekly Stampin' Up! Only Challenge begins and the theme is Valentine's Day. So, as I'm the coordinator for that group, it probably is a good idea for me to have taken some time off from tutorial writing to join in the challenge.
You may not know this, but I have not purchased many of the Valentine-themed Stampin' Up! products from the Stampin' Up! 2016 Occasions Catalog. While I do enjoy looking at all the wonderful projects people have been posting on the Internet, I'm just not in the mood for frilly Valentine's this year. I really want cutesy this year, and there's not much in the current Stampin' Up! product gallery that's cupids and such. So (gasp!) I've been looking at products from other companies. But I couldn't do that for today's project because this is, after all, supposed to be a Stampin' Up! Only project!
So I started looking through all my stamp sets for something that would work, and I got almost to the end (I have mine on my bookshelf in Alphabetical Order) when Watercolor Words jumped out at me. There was a heart and the word, "Love." If that's not Valentine-ish, I'm not sure what would be!
The card above was the first card that I made. Once I got it all together, I realized that I really should have added a mat behind the Love Blossoms Designer Paper (one product in the Occasions Catalog that I DID buy!). But the card was done. On the other hand, I still had all my "stuff" out on my work table, so I decided to try again.
The problem is that the heart and word were just a bit too big. Once I added a mat to the stamped layer, I didn't have much room to add some Designer Paper AND another mat. So for this card, I just made the Designer Paper the same 5-1/2" x 4-1/4" size of the card base. I don't think this card cries out for a mat as did the first one.
But now I have TWO valentine cards made! Yay!!! And I'll be getting more done as I'm already at the point in my tutorial booklet that I'm testing my instructions. Another day of that, and I'll be ready to start marketing it! I've been having a lot of fun with it, but I'm so ready to have it over with so I can start work on another! Stay tuned here and on Facebook!
