This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!
Hi friends! Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you feel loved today! I am not really huge on hearts; if I’m going to use a basic shape, I’d rather use something a bit more neutral. But, on a day celebrating love, hearts are pretty much the only shape that counts, right? When I was looking through the stamps which I’ve illustrated for Simon Says Stamp, I saw the floral heart in my Mother’s Day Dogwood set and knew that I needed to make a valentine out of it! Let’s get started with the details.
I began by stamping the dogwood heart arrangement from Mother’s Day Dogwood onto some Arches hot press watercolor paper using Contour ink, which is my favorite ink for use with no-line watercolor and alcohol marker coloring techniques. I have really been enoying using Distress Inks for watercoloring lately, so I pulled out my Distress Minis and selected several colors in muted shades of blush and olive green. For today’s project, I used Tattered Rose, Saltwater Taffy, Victorian Velvet, Bundled Sage, and Iced Spruce. I tapped them out on my palette, then used a damp paintbrush to pick the colors up and maneuver them around on my smooth watercolor cardstock. I find that hot press watercolor paper works beautifully with liquid watercolor mediums like the Distress Inks or Karin markers, while the super smooth surface picks up stamped details really well!
After I had finished watercoloring the image, I wanted to take advantage of the coordinating dies for the Mother’s Day Dogwood set to create a shaped card. I die cut the finished image, then trimmed down a piece of cardstock to create a small 3″ x 3.5″ card. I placed the heart die over the seam of the folded notecard and ran it through my die cutting machine so that it would create a shaped notecard. On the interior, I stamped a greeting from the So Much Love stamp set, which would be hidden behind the solid portion on the heart die cut. Such a fun way to take advantage of these detailed dies!
For the greeting on the front, I stamped the scripty “love” from the So Much Love stamp set onto Simon Says Stamp vellum using glittery embossing powder, then die cut it with the coordinating die. I adhered the greeting die cut to the front of my card using small dots of liquid adhesive, making sure to overlap the top portion of the die cut with the top of the floral heart image, adding some more stability to the delicate shaped card. For a final accent, I added a few dots of super sparkly metallic watercolors to the centers of the flowers and the dainty baby’s breath!
Well, that’s all for my project today. I hope you’ll try making a shaped card base the next time you need a special card… it really makes the project extra special and exciting! Thanks so much for stopping by, and Happy Valentine’s Day!
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