Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day! I got some lovely flowers off my boyfriend this morning and our nice Valentine’s meal is cooking as I type. I was going to make something special for us but it’s been a long day and Marks & Spencers were doing a ‘Dine in for £20’ deal that was too good to miss! So our menu consists of, King Prawn & Salmon Stacks for Starters, Beef Bourgignon and vegetables for our Main, Apple Frangipane Slices for dessert, a bottle of Prosecco and some chocolate truffles. I say that’s £20 well spent!

I went through a whole load of ideas for a card to make my boyf and after some thinking (and several scrapped cards) I decided to make him something a bit different that he’d want to keep.

I’ve recently bought some big ‘tags’ from Ranger with the thought of creating some bits of artwork and I’ve really liked working on them so I figured this would be a good place to start.

I really like doing galaxy backgrounds. I used inks instead of paint because I like how they layer; distress oxide inks are so good for this. I also misted some water mixed with perfect pearls onto the background which took some layers up as well as giving it a slight shimmer. It doesn’t really show up on photo but depending on the what light you look at this in, you can see the different colours coming through. So I let the background dry while I made a few things to stick onto the tag.

I die cut a panel using Sizzix’s ‘stitched slots’ die. I wanted this to look like it was made from metal so used some bronze gilding polish on it then distressed it a bit using a rough eraser. I added some Tim Holtz brads in each corner for ‘nails’.

I have a stamp set I wanted to use and liked the stamp-sized pictures so made some ‘postage stamps’ for some notecards where I could write some messages for my boyf. I heat embossed the images on the stamps and stuck them on some mini ‘postcards’ that I’d used distress inks on to age them. These went into the slots on the panel.

I die cut ‘I Love You’ out of kraft card and also cut a panel to stick them onto which I embossed to make it look like it was wooden. I used distress inks here too. I now have ink all over my hands and it’s been there for two days!

I used my new faceted heart die from Tim Holtz to make the origami heart. I used silved and grey ink on this to give it a metal look.

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I die cut a few hearts out of red card to stick on another part of the tag.

I flicked some silver and gold ink mixed with water off a brush to create some more ‘stars’ and I added a dotted pattern using gold liquid pearls. Finally I added some luna paste sporadically to give some more shine.

My boyfriend seemed to like this although he did refer to the heart as a ‘pyramid’ (sigh). It’s a good job he’s handsome…

I’m going to enter this into the following challenges:-

1. The Male Room “Love Your Men” challenge
2. The Crafty Cardmakers “Love Love Love” challenge
3. Ellibelle’s Corner “Something with Hearts” challenge

Materials Used:-

• Tim Holtz Et Cetera Chipboard Tag small size
• Tim Holtz Distress Oxide inks in Carved Pumpkin, Cracked Pistachio, Seedless Preserves, Blueprint Sketch, Candied Apple
• Tim Holtz Distress Inks in Vintage Photo, Antique Linen, Tea Dye, Black Soot
• Aladine Pigment Inkz in Metal Silver and Metal Gold
• Sizzix by Tim Holtz Stitched Slots die
• X-Cut Slimline alphabet die
• Sizzix by Tim Holtz Noted die
• Ranger Perfect Pearls in Perfect Pearl
• Ranger Liquid Pearls in Gold Pearl
• Sizzix by Tim Holtz Faceted Heart die
• Cosmic Shimmer Gilding Polish in Chocolate Bronze
• Cosmic Shimmer Luna Paste in Moonlight Pearl
• Technique Tuesday First Class Male stamp set
• Hero Arts White Embossing Powder
• Wood-effect Embossing Folder from eBay