Happy Valentines Day

And happy Saturday. It snowed again last night (a couple of inches), so everything is all white again.

Yesterday, when DH came home from work, he surprised me with these. Isn't he sweet. It has pussy willows in it. I love them. Every spring as children, we'd go hunt some up and bring them home. I will probably let these puff out a bit more and then take them out of the water and dry them. That way I can enjoy them for a long time, even if there are only three stems.

I made him a card using yesterdays' limited supplies challenge on SCS. I didn't want it to be frilly and feminine, so I thought I'd try to get the look of someone carving in a tree. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

I started the card last night, but needed to let it sit for awhile. I do that a lot. Spurts of creativity and then need to walk away and when I come back, I have new ideas. I rarely visualize a card in my head and just go with it. I almost always change what I was thinking would work and come up with different ideas along the way. That's just the way I create. Most of the time, the final creation is nothing like what I started out thinking I was going to make.



I started by stamping the bird heart in versamark on glossy white card stock. I couldn't use my heat gun since the house was asleep, so it didn't give me quite as sharp an image as I wanted, but I'm pretty happy with it anyway.

Then I stamped the woodgrain background (CHF) in chocolate chip over the heart. At that point, I was totally disappointed, because the heart wasn't showing up at all. So, I took a paper towel and rubbed over the ink to dry the versamark and then I brayed creamy caramel over the whole thing. Ta dah! The heart just popped out. I think if I could have heatset the versamark first, it would have been much more vivid. I wiped it again with the paper towel, but nothing much more came off.

I added some brads, scalloped square punches, the little bird and some leafy branches. With a bit of sponging and a sentiment, I was done. All in all a pretty simple card.

What's in it?
stamps: bird heart (Stampington & Co.), woodgrain backgrounder (Cornish Heritage Farms), always (SU)
ink: versamark, chocolate chip, creamy caramel, pacific point
paper: very vanilla, chocolate chip, tempting turquoise, glossy white
other: brayer, sponge dauber, brads, scalloped square punch, leaf punch (Martha Stewart), cuttlebug, bird nestabilities die (Spellbinders), foam tape

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you are able to spend the day with someone you love.