Valentine’s Day will arrive before you know it. The love of your life will secretly wish for something sweet and something beautiful. Handmade cards say, “I love you,” with my craft and my time and my supplies. They often make it into keepsake boxes as mementos for many years. I have a card for you today that will fit this bill.
To start, you will need to gather these supplies:
- Cardstock Warehouse Cardstock Papers in Razzle Berry Pink 100lb and Sweet Tooth White 100lb
- Cold press watercolor paper (130lb)
- Heat-resistant vellum for embossing
- Altenew Leaf Canopy Stamp and Die Bundle
- Watercolor paints or Aqua Pigments in fuschia and turquoise
- Fuschia ink pad
Watercolor safe black ink (I use Raven by Brutus Monroe) - Small tip watercolor brushes
- White embossing powder
- Clear embossing ink
- Baking powder, cornstarch or talc-free baby powder
- Heat tool
- Die cutting machine or precision scissors
- Double-sided foam and liquid adhesive
- Paper trimmer
- Stamping tool (i.e. large acrylic block, MISTI)
Follow these step-by-step directions to complete your card:
- Begin by cutting a piece of Sweet Tooth 100lb cardstock to 8" x 5.5" inches and folding it in half for a card base. Make sure you score before you fold for a clean line! (Visit our Scoring Paper 101 page to learn how.)
- Trim your Razzle Berry cardstock to 4" x 5.5" to make a back panel.
- With a large acrylic block or a stamping tool, stamp the outline image of the large leaf canopy onto the Razzle Berry panel using fuchsia ink. Set it aside.
- Prep a scrap of the remaining Razzle Berry cardstock by powdering it with baking powder, cornstarch, or talc-free baby powder. Stamp and emboss the "Sending Lots of Love" sentiment onto the scrap with clear embossing ink and white embossing powder.
- Return to your Razzle Berry panel and heat emboss the large leaf canopy image in the center in the same way as you did above.
- Prepare your heat resistant vellum for embossing in the same manner and stamp it with the large outline leaf canopy image using clear embossing ink and then emboss with white embossing powder.
- Using the large die from the Leaf Canopy Bundle, run the vellum through a die-cutting machine (I use a Cricut Cuttlebug).
- Cut the embossed vellum in half, leaving as many leaves intact as possible. Set this aside.
- Trim a piece of watercolor paper down to 4 ¼ x 5 ½ inches.
- Stamp the leaf canopy outline image onto the watercolor paper using watercolor safe black ink.
- With your watercolor brush pen, fill several of the leaves with water (try four at one time). You should have enough water on the paper to see a thin amount standing on top.
- Take a dry brush and dip it into your Aqua Pigments. You can start with either color and alternate. Just use a different dry brush for each color.
- Touch the standing water with your brush full of color and drop in some of each color into each leaf.
- Repeat this step until the entire image is colored in. Some of the leaves are touching in this image. You will want to let one leaf dry before coloring in an adjacent leaf. You may speed up the drying process with a heat tool. If you go outside the lines, no worries. With watercolor, there is room for loosely coloring images.
- Once dry, trim the watercolor paper down to 2 x 4 ¼ inches.
- Trim another piece of Razzle Berry cardstock to 2 ¼ x 4 ¼ inches and darken its edges with fuchsia ink to provide a contrast with the Razzle Berry cardstock panel.
- Adhere the large Razzle Berry panel to the front of the Sweet Tooth card base.
- Adhere the watercolored panel to the front of the darkened Razzle Berry panel.
- Add foam tape to the back of the darkened Razzle Berry panel and peel off the backing from the foam tape.
- Adhere the two pieces of embossed vellum to the back of this piece, one on each side so that they peek out from the sides.
- Pop this up on the front of the card.
- Trim your sentiment down to your liking and pop it up with double-thick foam adhesive to finish off the card.
Thank you for joining me today for this card. I am happy to connect with you about this card and supplies I used to create it via social media! Find me at my links below. Also, be sure to follow Cardstock Warehouse on Facebook and Instagram! Tag us in your creations using #cardstockwarehouse to be featured on our Instagram!
Happy Crafting!
Daniel from Del and Artie