Rustic Wooden Valentine

So, have you tried the latest paper crafting trend–creating your own wood grain? A lady in my Stamping Enablers Facebook group posted a tutorial for creating your own wood grain panels using Distress inks and glue and several people have been trying the technique.

Basically, you score a piece of watercolor paper to look like planks, flip the sheet over and rub distress inks over it. You can add water to help the colors blend but that's it! I hadn't given my new mini distress inks a good work out yet so this was a good project for them!

I knew before starting that I would be using one of my panels to make a Valentine so for my first effort, I assembled a number of red inks as well as some of my neutrals. I used a strip of watercolor paper to swatch out my inks as a reference before beginning.

I wanted to use the rough side of the watercolor paper for my wood so I scored on the opposite side. I decided to use a score of every half inch.

I then started dragging my lightest red down the panel. I then alternated between my other reds, adding strips of color around the panel until I was totally satisfied. During the process, I also sprayed water a few times and blotted with a paper towel and then added more ink. I also added in some of my neutrals. In the end, I used all of these: Candied Apple, Barn Door, Fired Brick, Aged Mahogany, Hickory Smoke, Ground Espresso, and Black Soot.

This is what my first attempt looked like:

First attempt at wood tutorial

My first try and I was hooked on this technique! I decided to try a few other color combinations while I had the inks at hand. You'll probably see these used in other projects sometime soon!

Here are some more that I did:

Second attempt with additional, smaller scale, scored panel

Third attempt. I'm definitely hooked!

Eventually, I turned back to my first red panel and die cut three hearts from it, angling my hearts so that the planks ran at an angle. For the smaller hearts, it would have been better if I had had a smaller scale of wood panel because you can't see much more than one or two planks in the die cuts. I learned from this so I created a smaller scale panel for the teal color that I wanted to work with on a future project.

Die cuts from panel.

After die cutting the hearts, I inked the edges with Aged Mahogany and then used my Distress Glaze to seal the colors so that they wouldn't come off on anything else as I worked with them.

I cut a matte from Coastal Cabana and embossed it using the Happy Heart Embossing Folder. I inked the edges using Early Espresso.

On a piece of Thick Whisper White I stamped the sentiment, using my MISTI; I used Early Espresso and then Versamark, heat embossing it with Clear Stampin' Emboss Powder. To give the tag a little interest, I used the Curvy Corner Trio Punch on the corners. I then inked the edges using both Aged Mahogany and Candied Apple.

I adhered both the tag and the heart die cut to the embossed matte using Dimensionals. I tied a length of Thick Coastal Cabana Twine around the matte and then adhered it to a Early Espresso card base using Dimensionals.

For the inside, I sponged the edges of a Whisper White matte using Coastal Cabana and then adhered the two smaller hearts using Fast Fuse Adhesive and Glue Dots.

To complete the card, I added a variety of sequins to the heart and a single red heart sequin to the tag.

My card will be entered in the following challenges:

I encourage you to try the woodgrain tutorial and then link me to your results. It's so much fun!

Valentine For Global Design Project

I am off work until Saturday so I am looking forward to some creative time in my craft room!

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, hearts seem to be front and centre on cards!

My card today is a 5 x 7" card designed for the Global Design Project #20.

The assignment this week is to CASE the Designer. While CASE generally means Copy And Share Everything, for the Global Design Project it translates as Copy And Selectively Edit. This enables the participants to be inspired by various things–colors, pattern or even the theme of the card–and truly make a design of their own.

I actually have a couple of ideas in mind for this challenge which I hope to work on this week but today's card has me focusing on the large heart, little hearts, and the twine from Connie's card design.

I cut a 5 x 7" card base from Crumb Cake card stock as well as a matte of 4.25 x 6.25". I cut 4.5 x 6.5" and 3.75 x 4" mattes from Very Vanilla. I also cut a small piece of Blushing Bride to go behind the smaller Very Vanilla matte.

Using a heart from the Hearts Collection Framelits Dies I die cut the smaller Very Vanilla matte. I then die cut five of the smallest heart die and punched several hearts using a punch from the Itty Bitty Accents Punch Pack. In addition, I used the Confetti Hearts Border Punch to punch some tiny hearts from Blushing Bride card stock.

I used one of my Tsukineko Fastastix Brushes to ink the edges of all the small hearts and used a Stampin' Sponge to ink the edges of both Very Vanilla mattes with Blushing Bride ink. Glue dots were used to adhere the Very Vanilla hearts around the cut out heart on the matte and then I used my Fine Tip Glue Pen to adhere the tiniest Blushing Bride hearts. I added some Wink of Stella to each Blushing Bride heart for a hint of glimmer.

Dimensionals were used to adhere the heart-encrusted matte to the Blushing Bride matte. The smaller Crumb Cake matte was adhered to the larger Very Vanilla matte using Fast Fuse Adhesive.

Linen thread was wrapped around the two mattes and secured with tape. Two Blushing Bride card stock hearts were punched and another die cut. They had their edges inked and a coat of Wink of Stella was applied to each. Once dry, the hearts were adhered on top of the linen thread using Dimensionals and glue dots. The mattes were then adhered tot he card front using Fast Fuse Adhesive.

Using my MISTI, the sentiment was stamped with Crumb Cake and Versamark on Very Vanilla and heat embossed with Clear Stampin' Emboss Powder. The sentiment was die cut using the banner die from the Large Numbers Framelits Dies. The sentiment was adhered to the bottom of the card front using Dimensionals.

A matte of Very Vanilla was cut for inside the card. A border stamp and Crumb Cake ink was used at the bottom and was heat embossed with Clear Stampin' Emboss Powder. The edges were inked with Blushing Bride and then the matte was adhered with Fast Fuse Adhesive.

I love the color scheme of this card but I'm not sure if I really like the card. I am somewhat troubled by the large Blushing Bride area inside the heart cut out but not sure what else to do with it.

Sometimes it is difficult to decide when a card is "finished!" Does this ever happen to you? Do you think this card is finished or do you have a suggestion for how I could improve it? Leave me a comment below!