Valentine Card

I’m feeling very pleased with myself because I’ve managed to complete my hubby’s Valentine card ahead of time – usually I am racing against deadlines! Also, I completed the project in a day, which is practically unheard of for me, as I am usually a very slow worker.

The finished card is A5 size, the base for it being a folded sheet of black A4 cardstock.

I have matted a piece of gold mirri-card, onto which is a piece of white 100 gsm paper printed with text on the computer, and then inked with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink. The lower part of the card consists of a small piece of dark red cardstock, embossed with the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder, and finished with a piece of black ribbon with flecks of gold – this is from a collection of textured ribbons that I recently acquired. I haven’t really used ribbon in any of my projects yet, and was keen to try.

I cut the two hearts by hand from dark red and bright red cardstock respectively, and the dark red one I embossed with parallel lines using my Scor-Pal scoring board. The bright red one was embossed with Swiss Dots again, in the Cuttlebug, and I then inked them with Black Soot Distress Ink, using my brayer. The parallel lines came out fine, but I think I may have pressed harder with the brayer on the Swiss Dots one, or it may be that I inked the lined one before I cut out the heart, but inked the Swiss Dots one after I had cut out the shape. I was about to throw it away and start again, but I looked at it again and actually rather liked the distressed look. The two hearts are tied together with some gold embroidery thread, with dimensionals between them, and underneath, and a small blob of Pinflair glue securing the gold thread to prevent it untying.
I cut two further half heart shapes and embossed and inked them in the same way, for the inside of the card.

The butterfly was cut using Penny Duncan’s lacy butterfly .svg file (see her blog in my Blog List for a link to her cut files) – I cut the background piece from white cardstock, and the lacy foreground piece from black cardstock and stuck them together. Then I inked the edges with Black Soot Distress Ink. I rubbed this ink pad on my craft mat, and spritzed on a little water, and painted the edges and the back with a watercolour brush.  The tips of the antennae and highlighing on the body were done with gold heat embossing. I folded the wings upwards, and then I made a second butterfly the same, cut off the antennae and body and stuck it down flat on the card, and then stuck the top butterfly on top. Before sticking it down, I added a blob of Pinflair glue under each wing to keep them projecting upwards – they will squash down sufficiently to go in an envelope, but spring up again nicely.

For the inside of the card, I printed an insert on the computer. I made a montage of several different images of grass, flowers and butterflies, reducing the opacity of the background part, and then converting the colour of the whole design. The montage was done in my photo editing software (Serif PhotoPlus) and then finished, with the addition of the text, in my desktop publisher (Serif PagePlus). The insert was then printed, and trimmed to be slightly smaller than the card itself, and adhered with a strip of double-sided tape onto the left-hand side of the black card base, just beside the hinge, so that when you open the card, the insert opens with it.

I placed the two embossed half heart pieces onto a piece of scrap card and drew round them, cutting out the resulting heart shape and using it as a mask to ink onto the card insert with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink. I then glued the two embossed heart shapes down flat onto the masked shape, with no dimensionals this time.

Here are some close-up pictures of various elements of the card.

Do you think my hubby will guess who it’s from?