February is the month for love, romance and Valentine’s Day!

Love is all around! Right now you can’t go anywhere without seeing hearts, flowers and advertisements urging you to buy the perfect Valentine’s gift in time for February 14th. There seems be an awful lot of pressure from retailers to celebrate with showy gifts.  People I know deliberately “boycott” Valentine’s day because they feel it’s “overly commercialized” or that celebrating your loved one shouldn’t be confined to one day a year.  While this is true, it is lovely to be pampered on Valentine’s Day.

FUN FACT: Approximately 150 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second most popular card-sending holiday after Christmas. (Wow!!!! That’s a lot of cards!)

The Valentine’s Rush

On Valentine’s Day, there will be people frantically racing to buy flowers, chocolates or whatever their loved ones desire because Valentine’s Day somehow crept up on them. (Perhaps they live in a bubble?) If history is anything to go by, my darling husband will more than likely be among that group because as he will attest there is nothing quite like the simmering anger of a woman who did not even receive a card on Valentine’s Day.

Hint: when your loved one says everything is FINE and they’re “totally okay with not receiving a SINGLE thing”, it really is as far from fine and okay as you can get. You need to make amends fast!!!

Beat the Valentine’s Rush

If you follow me on Facebook, you would have seen my reminder in January to order your supplies for your Valentine’s craft because it was only 5 weeks away.

Fingers crossed you headed my warning,  ordered all your supplies and have your projects underway.  If not there’s still time to order your supplies and get started – just head over to my Online Stampin’ Up! store today.

Looking for Valentine’s inspiration?

The new occasions and sale-a-bration catalogues are full of wonderful Valentine’s ideas. So too is the current annual catalogue.

Those of you that have been to my classes or who follow my blog or social media, know that I’m not really a sappy romantic stamper so Stampin’ Up!’s  beautiful Forever Lovely and Meant to Be Bundles  (Occasions Catalogue – pages 5 & 6) are just not my style but they might be yours.

My first Valentine’s project

The project’s I’m sharing this week made with the Hey Love stamp set – this set is so not my style either.  It’s cute but wasn’t a set that I was dying to own. So I guess you’re wondering how I came to be making cards with it. A few weeks ago, my Stampin’ friend Kim came over for a crafternoon with the stamps she knew I didn’t own and encouraged me to play with them.  It was her subtle way of giving me a creative challenge.

So the challenge was set.  I struggled a little at first  but in the end I made six projects but I’ll just share one today.

Here’s my Stinkin’ Sweet card:

At first glance the card looks a little simple and isn’t the traditional Valentine’s red and white. There is more involved in this card than meets the eye.

The Layers

1. So I started with a top folding Basic Gray Card Base (half an a4 sheet cut length ways folder in half)
2. Next a big shot embossed, distressed and torn basic gray layer was added.   The Subtle Dynamic Embossing Folder was used (HINT: if you want deep grooves then remember to spritz the card stock with water before you run it through the big shot)  The distressed edges were created by hand tearing and running the blade of my paper snips (scissors) along the edges of the card stock.
3. The next layer is a whisper white piece (3″ x 3″) stamped with the Artisan Textures in Melon Mambo. I overlapped the stamp a few times to create solid block of textured colour that covered about two-thirds of the card stock an the top left of the card.  It was important to leave some white space too.
4. Then I rubbed it over with my embossing buddy, stamped the words “Stinkin’ Sweet” from the Hey Love cling stamp set in Versamark ink on the Melon Mambo image and heat embossed with white embossing powder and my heat tool. (Click here if you need heat embossing tips.)
5. A Melon Mambo “Polaroid” frame (made with my Stampin’ Trimmer) was added and a mess of silver metallic thread.  (I used the multipurpose liquid glue)
6. Next up I stamped the Hey Love skunk in Basic Gray ink on a 5″ x 3″ scrap of whisper white and coloured it with the clear wink of stella brush dipped in basic gray ink.
7. The hearts and nose are coloured with a Melon Mambo marker from the Brights Stampin’ Write marker collection.
8. When the image was completely dry, it was punched out using the 2″ circle punch and attached to the card using stampin’ dimensionals.

The inside story

The inside wasn’t forgotten either:

• I stamped a 3¾” x 1½” Whisper White piece along the bottom edge with the largest stamp from the Artisan Textures stamp set in Melon Mambo ink.
• A melon mambo strip (3¾” x ½”) was attached to the whisper white strip flush with the bottom edge.
• Just up from the bottom edge a 3¾” x ¼” strip of Basic Gray was added.
• The strips were then attached to a 3¾” x 5¼” of whisper white and secured to the inside of the card  with multipurpose liquid glue.
• The Hey Love and Artisan Textures stamps and clear wink of stella brush were clean using the Simply Shammi. I wiped the lids of the ink pads clean with a paper towel but you could use the Shammi for that too.

Hope you like my Stinkin’ Sweet card and you have enough information to try this on your own.

To make it easy for you to recreate this card, I’ve listed all the supplies used below. Just click on the picture and it will take you to my Online Stampin’ Up store.  Don’t forget that your order of $50 or more during February 2019 you will get a free exclusive class at home and for every $90 you spend during Sale-a-Bration you can choose Sale-a-Bration rewards. (NOTE: Class at home is exclusive to The Creative Eclectic and only available when you order from me!)

Until next time… Happy creating

Chrissy x

The Supplies: