Valentines!

EDITED:  I received a very sweet "heads up" to go over and check out the DIE CUT DIVA'S BLOG for today.  I saw that their challenge for this month are untraditional Valentines and so I am going to post the Friendship Tree card over there.  For any of you who aren't aware, DCD's is a great little group that has a Flickr photostream that one can link their creations to.  Obviously these are cards that feature some die cutting.  I have found some wonderful inspiration over there myself....ways to use die cuts differently and just to find ways of layering various dies.  Well, DCD's also have a blog and now they are going to pump up their blog a bit and I, for one, am pretty excited about that prospect!  The challenge over there now is untraditional Valentines....or Valentine's that a feature embossing. Please check out the details...and link up your creations!  Here is the DCD's link......

http://die-cut-divas.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/february-challenge-untraditional.html 

 I had a little bit of time today to play around in my crafting area and boy-was it fun to finally get inky again.  I did some copic coloring and couldn't figure out why the markers were so streaky on the paper until I realized that I was using the wrong paper.  I was using a paper that had a pretty high gloss to it but by then I was committed and of course didn't want to waste paper, ink and time so I just forged onward.  I am not a big Valentine's day person so I often have to push myself to make these particular cards.  I like the colors used....but find that by the time Valentines rolls around I am just sick of the constant pink, red and white palette.  I did find some neat stamp images the last few years and so today those are some of the images I worked with.  All dies are Spellbinder Dies. The tree image is the WhipperSnapper Designs Friendship Tree.  I love this little tree because it can be used for occasions other than Valentine's Day and it also has options like cutting out the flowers and hearts and popping random ones up.

As I have mentioned before I am getting into decorating the inside of the cards more and more lately.  To me it is fun, it looks nice and the bonus is it uses all those extra scraps that I have laying around.  The following picture isn't great.....I don't have the insides glued down yet...not till after I write the message!  Also, I wanted to point out another tip I tried that works when using very intricate dies such as the one I have on this card.  Before I have said that wax paper works to pop out those intricate cuts but sometimes your die, unless you take the time to fully tape everything down, will slide on the wax paper and mess up your cut. Somewhere out in the blogland I read that rubbing a dryer sheet over your die before placing your paper in it will also allow the paper to pretty much fall out of the die after cutting.  I tried it today and it actually did work pretty well.  I found that I still needed to use a stick pin to clean my dies before storing them but otherwise, the cut came out very quickly and cleanly!  

 For the next card I used a Northwoods Rubber Stamp Co. image and when I bought it I just thought it was different and really kinda fun for a Valentines card.  I did a lot of matting here.....I use my Perfect Ruler's rulers for straight matting and am always happy with how quick and even my mats turn out.  I then colored the image twice....popping up the three big hearts on foam dots.  I also found this rhinestone heart in the bridal section of JoAnn's.  I liked how many hearts I got for the price....there are 40 hearts in a pack for about $8.00. I colored  this one with copics to tie in with the colors of the balloon.

Again I finished the inside with some left over papers. I also use papers for the inside that I feel I will never use anywhere else....know what I mean?  In every pack of papers that I have ever bought there is a pattern or two that really doesn't appeal to me very much....a pattern that will simply never be used on the outside of  card.  But, I find that those paper patterns are often just the right punch of color for a card's inside and so once again I am able to use up some more of my stash. And, I know we all have more stash than we need!

Thank you for stopping by today.  It is currently 2 degrees below 0 here and the windchill will have us at negative 20 degrees soon.   I guess tomorrow it will be around 30 degrees below zero......brrrrrrrrr.  I hope it is warmer by you all ;-D

Be well,
Sheila