Clear Love

As soon as I looked at the first card in the gallery of today's featured stamper on SCS (see Veronica/I'mVeronica's SCS gallery here), I knew exactly which card I wanted to recreate. I thought that with a little adjustment, Veronica's baby card (find it here) would work perfectly as a Valentine's card. Who needs Valentine's Day stamps to create a valentine when you've got letter stamps handy . . .

I replaced the word "baby" in the original card with the word "love." I used the Playful Alphabet set from Kitchen Sink Stamps and some embellishments (a layered pair of felt hearts from American Crafts and a big button) to create the word.

The great thing about clear stamps is that there's no guesswork involved in the placement of the images. Here's a picture of how I lined up the letter stamps and the embellishments I planned to use on the acrylic block to test for placement and spacing before I stamped the images. Saves a lot of time, frustration, and paper, too!

After I stamped the images and secured the embellishments, I set the stamped panel on a Purely Pomegranate mat and then on a black scalloped rectangle. I changed my panel to a rectangle rather than the square in the original version of the card because I don't have the Nestabilities scalloped square dies (yet!). I found a scrap of dotted Prints series paper in Rose Red for the panel across the cardfront and added Pretty in Pink scraps along the top and bottom of the strip. I tied a wider strip of pink grosgrain ribbon across the patterned paper panel to go with the tiny piece of pink grosgrain tied through the button that serves as the letter o in "love."

I am not a good "doodler," so I hesitated a bit before drawing the panel on the front of the card. I stamped the sentiment (from Never a Loss 4 Words, also from Kitchen Sink Stamps) first, then used a ruler to guide the lines. Not really doodling, but somewhat out of my comfort zone, none the less.

Materials Used:

Playful Alphabet and Never a Loss 4 Words stamp sets (Kitchen Sink Stamps); Pearlescent Poppy pigment ink (Brilliance); Midnight Black chalk ink (Versa Magic); scalloped rectangle die(Nestabilities); wide pink grosgrain (AC Moore); button (Walmart); pink felt hearts (American Crafts); Purely Pomegranate, Pretty in Pink, Basic Black, and Whisper White cardstock, Rose Red Prints Series designer paper, Pretty in Pink grosgrain ribbon, glue dots, dimensionals (Stampin' Up!); black pen (Micron)