Bitter Sweet

February brings mixed emotions to my sister and I.  We lost our mom on Valentine's Day eight years ago.  Both of us have found Valentine's Day extremely difficult.  This year I decided to start the healing process and celebrate my mother's life and not dwell on her death.  Baby steps...

I love to make cards for my sister and this is the one I made for Valentine's Day.

 

I used my new Martha Stewart "Hearts" corner and border punches and created the red and the white rectangles.  I embossed the white piece with Cuttlebug's "Swiss Dots" embossing folder and the red piece with Cuttlebug's "Heart Blocks" embossing folder.  I topped it off with a pretty ribbon bow held together with a heart button and placed a paper doily heart below.

 

On the inside I cut red carnation patterned paper to fit and glued it on one side.  To make the greeting I punched three hearts with an Anna Griffin punch, and then I punched around each of the hearts with a scalloped circular punch from Paper Studio.  I glued the circular part and the center of the heart down and left the "wings" of the heart loose.  I bent the heart wings up and wrote "I", "Love" and "You" on the centers.

In addition to the card, I included a bookmark I made using red cardstock, a piece of Valentine ribbon and the same Martha Stewart "Hearts" punch.

To complete the ensemble, I used another piece of red carnation paper and formed an envelope using "The Enveloper".

  

Here are some tutorials for "The Enveloper"...

   Paper Pressings 

   Sara's Blog

   Crafter's Companion Video Clips  

   You Tube 

The Envelope Please

I joined a swap a while ago to make an "envelope" card for exchange.  I chose an African theme because I had some cool looking "faux animal skin" cardstock.  

It is called an envelope card because the inside is made with several envelopes cut to size and glued together and to the card covers.

You can learn how to do this envelope card here...

   Dawn's Stamping Studio