It's funny; I got into paper crafting because I really enjoyed making my own cards. I stumbled upon Stampin Up! fairly early on and loved learning all the new stamping techniques, acquiring new card making tools and naturally progressed into scrapbooking as it became popular. I now find it almost difficult to come up with cards. I don't think it's so much the lack of ideas as it is a general laziness towards making cards. I don't tend to enjoy card making as much as I enjoy scrapbooking and so when faced with a bunch of cards I need to make I usually opt for a simple, easy design that I can whip up fast. All four of these cards were made in an hour this morning. I was under the gun to make all my valentine's for my guys and I'm pretty happy with the cards I came up with (sorry, the photos aren't really the greatest). They're a bit more "girly" than I'd usually make them since I used pinks and hearts and flowers but hey, it's valentine's day!
Using a large sheet of dark pink paper for the card background I used a lot of black to accent my layers and make it a bit more manly. I found black checkered ribbon for the bow and then just layered black, white, black, and pink paper stamped with my rubber "I LOVE YOU" stamp. I added a few embellishments to the hearts using tiny stick on rhinestones.
Using the other half of the pink paper I made the second card. I found several scraps of pink patterned paper in my pink scrap bin that all coordinated really well together. I mounted each one onto a piece of black paper and set them down on my card front re-arranging them over and over again until I had a design I liked. I then used a small square of white paper and stamped my frog image in black ink. I colored the image in using my markers and adhered it to the smallest pink square. The sentiment inside reads "have I toad you lately that I love you?"
I used red paper for the background this time and ran the card through my Big Shot using a fancy flower embossing plate. I cut small semi- circles out of the two sides of the card for my ribbon to thread to and used double sided tape to hold it in place. I then stamped my words onto white paper, mounted them onto a patterned red paper, then onto black and back onto white. I placed the multi- layered sentiments onto the center of the card and added a few more sticky rhinestone embellishments the card between the letters L O V E.
For the final card I used the remaining red paper for the card and placed a slim black ribbon at the top of the card, tying it into a bow. I stamped my heart image (twice) onto a long strip of white paper and trimmed it to fit my card. I then mounted that onto patterned red paper and then a thicker strip of black paper. I used my markers to color in the hearts and backgrounds and attached the whole thing to the card front.
