The Shimmery White Cardstock is wonderful to use on a card like this Bloomin’ Heart Thinlit Valentine Card. Not only is it beautiful in and of itself with its subtle shimmer, but it works well for watercoloring. Not that I started this card thinking of watercoloring!  I just wanted to make the beautiful Bloomin’ Heart die cut with the Shimmery White cardstock. Then I decided to color in the little die cut flowers that come with the heart, and after that thought I would color the leaves on the heart die cut. That led to coloring the flowers too, doing it all very loosely, not trying to get every single shape colored exactly correctly and perfectly.  I used my Aqua Painter and ink in the lids of my ink pads:  Melon Mambo, Daffodil Delight, Bermuda Bay, Old Olive, Tangerine Tango.  The Shimmery White cardstock holds up well to watercoloring like this, better than just Whisper White.

After coloring the heart and making sure it was dry (you can use the Heat Tool to quickly dry the watercoloring), I used the new Fine-Tip Glue Pen to apply glue to many of the tiny spaces on the back of this heart. If you don’t have this Fine-Tip Glue Pen in your arsenal, I really suggest you add it to your next order! I adhered it to a card base of Soft Sky cardstock. Next I adhered the die cut flowers to the heart and added Rhinestone Jewels for some bling!

The banner at the bottom of the card is a stamp in the coordinating stamp set, Bloomin’ Love Photopolymer Stamp Set as well as the words.  I cut it out the banner by hand with Paper Snips.

This Bloomin’ Heart Thinlit Die is just beautiful and can be used for more than Valentine’s Day. It cut out well with the Precision Base Plate by Stampin’ Up! I rolled it forward and back so that it went through the Big Shot three times. Then if you take the die with the paper inside and lay it on the foam and roll with the Big Shot Die Brush, almost all the little pieces some out and the die cut shape pops out easily.  You still probably have to poke out a few pieces with the Paper Piercing Tool or something similar.

If you would like to save 15%, purchase the Bloomin’ Love Photopolymer Bundle and get both the Bloomin’ Heart Thinlit Dies and the Bloomin’ Love Photopolymer Stamp Set.

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I didn’t really know what to title this valentine, so I titled it with everything:  Kraft Corrugated Red Foil Glimmer Valentine! I sort of copied my own valentine creation from last week when I was making some sample valentines for the valentines two moms and I made for their kids’ classes. But today, as I was looking for some current designer paper to use, I spied this Kraft Corrugated Paper on my table. Sometimes no matter what you THINK you are going to make, you might get inspiration and a different idea from something else you see. So I just decided to mix textures and looks with kraft textured paper, sparkly glimmer paper, and shiny red foil paper!

The card is a square 4 1/4″ x 4 1/4″ base of Whisper White, and layered with Red Foil Sheets pieces, Silver Glimmer Paper,  and the Kraft Corrugated Paper (which also has white corrugated sheets in the package!). I used three punches:  1″ Square Punch, the Postage Stamp Punch (retired), and the heart punch in the Itty Bitty Accents Punch Pack. For a little embellishment, I tied a thread pulled from the 1 1/4″ Burlap Ribbon around the heart. And the greeting is from the popular stamp set in the Occasions Catalog, Bloomin’ Love.

If you are interested in Stampin’ Up! products and you don’t already have a Demonstrator, contact me and I can send you the new Occasions Catalog and Sale-A-Bration Brochure! Just email me at Karen@KarenStamps.com.

Try using different textures and materials to make your valentines and see what you come up with! It’s time to be thinking about Valentines!

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This Bloomin’ Love Small Glimmer Hearts Valentine is fun to make with our beautiful Glimmer Paper! But what if you want some colored glimmer hearts?  It’s easy to color the Silver or Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer Paper.

To make these little colored hearts, I cut a strip of Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer Paper into a strip and then colored areas of the paper the colors I wanted to use. To color the paper, I used a bit of ink refill in the lid of the ink pad (or whatever ink was already there – you can squeeze the lid before you open the ink pad and if it is juicy enough, you will have a little puddle of ink in the lid). I used my Aqua Painter, one of my most useful tools in my opinion, to pick up some ink and paint it onto the glimmer paper. You could also use Sponge Daubers if you have those.

You can make the color pretty dark because it will be lighter when it dries. And I found that it needed a blast with the Heat Tool to really get it dry. Maybe that is related to how much ink you put on the paper or the colors you use.

For this card, since I wanted hearts, I punched some little hearts with the heart punch in the Itty Bitty Accents Punch Pack. I adhered each one with two Glue Dots.  The Valentine greeting is from the Bloomin’ Love Photopolymer Stamp Set.  I think we too easily just focus on the pretty heart stamp in that set, but take a good look at ALL the stamps in that set you will see words, flowers, a pretty banner, and a few others. Almost all of them, except maybe the greeting I used on this card, can be used for other occasions, even just general use.

Here is what my glimmer paper coloring looked like!

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It was such a fun time on Friday night making class valentines with two of my customers/friends for their kids’ classes! Yes, they are really ahead of the game, but since they are both so busy we decided to do it as early as possible. I love looking for ideas for cards so I created a secret board on Pinterest where I could pin anything I came across that I liked. I think only the mummy guy is from the Pinterest board, the other two I came up with after I heard what interests the kids had.

The mummy is from the Googly Ghouls Stamp Set (retired) and I copied this clever idea from Pinterest. I made mine be a small card, 3 1/4″ x 3 1/4″ square since I had leftover card stock from wedding invitations and thought this would be a great time to use it and save some cutting. Besides small is cuter sometimes! Since it was for a boy’s class, instead of a big red heart I used some Brushed Silver card stock (also retired). I stamped three little red hearts and punched out one small heart. Not sure this guy has one in this photo, but it is extra-cute to adhere a googly eye to the mummy. We forgot to do that at the end, but it’s plenty cute without anyway.

The middle valentine is for a girl who loves horses!  I used the retired stamp set Wanted. Sometimes it pays to keep around old stamp sets although something has to give space-wise sometime soon at my house! But this set is one I would probably keep. Somehow I came up with making a tag with the Scalloped Tag Topper Punch. The background paper on the tag is the woodgrain pattern from a sheet in the Farmers Market Designer Series Paper. We all decided on just a half card size (again, sometimes smaller is cuter!) and I think it’s perfect!

And the third one is for a boy who loves soccer!  I found (again) a retired Stampin’ Up! sports stamp set, never used! But any time now, when I make those scrapbook pages for my boys sports!!!  The grass is made with the Fringe Scissors. And the soccer ball is stamped on the card and also punched out and popped up for fun.

So the two moms and I made 75 valentines for 3 classes in a couple of hours. A real team effort! Hopefully the kids will like them, but it was also about us getting together to have some stamping fun! I always say one of the best things about Stampin’ Up! is the people you meet!