Another Valentine Card

We had lunch out with our friends David and Gisele today, and afterwards we came back to our house, and I showed her my ARTHaven and the card I’d made for my hubby for Valentine’s Day. She told me she had had a horrendous work week and hadn’t even had time to think about Valentine’s, let alone get a card or present, and she asked me if I could “knock something up.” This isn’t the normal way I work so it was a bit of a challenge, but I rose to it, and we did it together. She said more or less what she wanted, and I got going!

First of all I rubber stamped the butterfly background using two sizes of stamps and Tattered Rose Distress Ink, sometimes printing off the excess ink onto a piece of scrap paper first, to give a subtle, misty look, and then inked the edges with Spun Sugar Distress Ink. I then made a heart template and drew round it onto red card, reduced the size and drew round it again, and handed it over to Gisele to cut out. She loved my Tim Holtz scissors and I told her they were the best scissors I’d ever owned! I stamped these two hearts with a darker red ink pad, using the same butterfly stamp. I heat embossed the same butterfly shape with gold embossing powder, and stuck the larger heart down with double-sided tape. Gisele was fascinated to see the gold emerge as I heated the embossing powder – I remember how thrilled I was the very first time I saw it, and actually it still gives me a thrill! It looks like magic as the dull, grainy powder is transformed into pure gold before your eyes! The smaller heart was stuck down with dimensionals.

Gisele then chose some lace out of my lace bits box and I stuck this down with double sided tape before adding the ribbon and the bow. Again, she enjoyed seeing the bow being made on the bowshaper I bought at the show. She chose the little embellishment to go on the bow, which was one of the jewelled flower stamens I’d bought in the cake decorating shop. I then matted the card onto red card – A4 folded to A5 size, and the final touch was the little gold butterfly adhered with my hot glue gun.

While I was stamping and inking, she was busy making a ribbon rose – I had bought some gorgeous 2-tone green and pink wide, wired ribbon at the show, and showed her how to pull up the wire on one edge to form a ruche, and wrap the end of the wire round the base and cover the base and wire with florist’s tape to form the stem. She said she would like to put it on the envelope, so I found a plain white envelope and proceeded to decorate it to co-ordinate with the card.

Again, I stamped butterflies at random with Tattered Rose Distress Ink, and inked the edges with Spun Sugar Distress Ink. She chose some silk leaves from my stash, as she felt those went better with the fabric rose than paper ones, and I stuck it down with my hot glue gun. The final touch was another butterfly embellishment, this time in pink, again stuck down with my hot glue gun. Just room for her to write his name on the envelope!

We talked about butterflies and how we love them, and agreed that they are a symbol of freedom and beauty, and also transformation and growth, all important aspects of any marriage. On the card, she wanted to butterfly embellishment to look as if it had just flown up from the smaller heart, to symbolise that a real expression of your love for someone is that you don’t hold them down and control them, but allow them to be free – when they choose to stay with you, that love is really worth something!

At lunch today, I had no idea I would be in my ARTHaven today, or that I would make another Valentine card this year! We had such fun together in my ARTHaven, sharing ideas and having a good laugh too, and together we created this lovely card for her hubby. We both agreed what fun it was, working with someone else, and we are going to try and do it again soon. She saw my florist’s ribbon kit that I got at the show, and the flower which the man on the stand had made, and really admired it, so I said we could make some of those together – I want to make a tiny bouquet to go in a window card for my mum for Mothering Sunday.