6 easy-peasy Valentines cards you can make yourself

Hi there,

Last year, I did a few posts (here and here) about some easy Valentines cards you could make yourself for your loved one. This year, I decided to think up a few designs you could do yourself with not really any specialist craft equipment.  I hope these inspire you to give the card-making thing a go!


1. The simple Dot-to-dot interactive card



The first one is the simplest of all. All you need is a piece of white card, a ruler, pencil and a red gel pen.   How about a Dot to dot postcard (or card) for your loved one.  I simply drew myself a few grid-lines to ensure it was even and not wonky and then drew the design in pencil which I went over in red gel pen.  Nice to have an interactive card

2.  The origami heart card


 I should begin this with a disclaimer that I am egregious at origami so if I can do this, you can! How to Orange shows you how to make the heart which is really easy, just size it up to the size you want, making sure you cut a rectangle with the width half of the length.  This entire card was recycled- old music, red packaging from a Christmas card and a photo-card envelope. Choose a colour and paper of your choice.

3.  The scribble hearts


Also entirely made out of scrap of the same sources, this was purely an experiement. On a fragment of black card, I put a heart stencil (made from punching for the cards below) and scribbled over it with a gold Sharpie. Did this three times. Edged it with a ruler and then mounted onto scrap card.  Use double-sided tape for a neat finish.

4.  The textured hearts

Again, you just need some scrap card (black) and some textured card. The brown corrugated cardboard came from the wrapping of a Bacon-roll I had one morning from the BP petrol station- the plastic wrapper is surrounded by this perfectly good card.  The red COULD come from the old Costa coffee exteriors (I used to use these a lot) but I just used some I had. Used the Sharpie again to doodle Love all over the black, mounted it, drew red spots with the gel pen and wrapped a piece of Bakers twine from a Christmas present and finito! I used 3d pads to give the hearts some height.

5.  The DIY polka dot heart card

 I used a scalloped heart punch to punch these hearts but you could just cut them free-hand.  I then coloured each one with polka dots in different gel pens.Mounted them on 3d sticky pads (can be got from Poundland) and stuck at jaunty angles.

5. The Pink Elephant picture inspired Doodle heart card

The last design was inspired by the inspiration picture for the Pink Elephant Craft Challenge this week

To design a card inspired by the picture. In the same way as the former card, I punched 9 hearts and had fun doodling them with different patterns in red.

Did as shown and finally added my handwriting to finish the card.

CBC might get one of these next week or I might make another one. After all, these could all be used for wedding/engagement general girly greetings cards.

Did these help you in any way? I'd love to know if you decided to make your own cards at all?



Linking to:

Pink elephant challenge


Creative Mondays

 Brilliant Blog posts with Honest Mum


 You're gonna love it Tuesday

Trying to avoid the January blues

Like yesterday's post, the Daring Cardmakers blog is another I enjoy but have failed to join up with in a while. Seeing, the prompt on Friday of January blues, I decided to make my Stepmum's birthday card with a blue flower as a statement, to stand out.

I used a few techniques here to make this:

• The flower was made from 6 punched circles. I used an embossing tool on them and rubbed in circles from the outside to the inside, lying the circles over a piece of funky foam. The effect is that the circles start to curl up at the sides, giving more of a flower feel. The card was recycled from an aborted card project.
• The base card was just a plain lilac one but I used the embossing tool over the foam again to indent spots to make it look like pre-embossed card.
• If I suggested you buy one thing for beginning card making, I do think a lace-edged punch is the way to begin. I used a Martha Stewart one . You can look at some here.  I used this one on all my Wedding thank you cards, table names and a zillion cards.  You can see I used it here to trim the top and bottom of my card.  
• To add a more 3d dimension to the centre of the flower, I grabbed a box of tiny pale blue buttons (I must have a good 200 in there and I bought in a charity shop for pence some years ago) and layered them on top and stuck down with PVA glue, applied with the end of a de-cottoned cotton ear bud.
• It struck me the card was a bit bare so I stuck a row of buttons to the top and bottom yet something was still missing.
• Having used my Martha Stewart punch on another piece of turquoise card for another card (coming soon, got to wait till the recipient receives it as she might see it on here!) all the debris from the puncher was sitting on the table and being Mrs-recycling, I seperated some of the turquoise circles and applied them the gap and round the flower. Somehow, this was what added the final finish to the card.
• It's not fancy or beautifully detailed like many cards I admire or love, but this is Ubiquitous me when it comes to cards.

All you need is: embossing tool, thrifted buttons, circle punch and edge punch, PVA glue, Prittstick, piece of funky foam, base card and coloured card scraps- all of which are versatile and can be used a myriad ways.


Hope you like it.

xxx


http://www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.co.uk/


Yay, Claire featured TWO of my posts in her picks of last week:
Linking to Creative Mondays with Claire Justine


Brilliant blog posts with Honest Mum blog


And if you scrolled to the end, how are you doing with the January blues?  Are you dealing with them ok? How do you combat them? Apparently today is the most depressed/depressing day according to one of my colleagues. It's a thing today!

xx