Valentines.

 

I was hit by an urge to send Valentines this year. Who knows why? I usually make my own Christmas cards and didn't have time to this year (nor did I last year, but I made them anyway, crying quietly to myself late at night whilst doing so -- this year I forced myself to purchase cards early, which solved the problem), so perhaps the card-making urge was just too strong. And, of course, I wanted to tell a few people who I love that I love them. So I decided to challenge myself to make no more than 6 cards, for my family and closest friends, using stuff I already have. 

I began with a card pack that I bought somewhere at Christmas time. The cards with white, brown, cream and grey and I went with the grey. I wanted to make something home-made looking yet faintly sophisticated and grey seemed right for that. I also just love grey. It's by far my favorite neutral color. 

I used some scrapbooking paper that I had picked up in PA at a Michael's. The paper was all in a 1950's style that made me a little crazy with joy. After much deliberation, I decided to actually use my two favorite prints from it. The one above (which I confess, I loved so much, I kept for myself) and a cool flocked black and white style that you can see below. 

 

I also used a set of letter stamps that I got at Michael's for $1 with a blue inkpad that I had. Yep, I'm the kind of person who has random inkpads lying around. That's why I don't need to buy.any.thing.for.a.while. 

For envelopes, I had to improvise since the card set didn't come with them and I didn't want to use something that didn't fit right. I remembered that my friend Duck sometimes makes cards out of magazines so I spent 10 minutes online reading various envelope-from-magazine-pages tutorials and trying to figure out what size template to print out. Then I read on one of 'em that you can just carefully open up the right sized envelope and use that as your template. Ah-ha! Genius. 

I found it really absurdly fun to choose appropriate magazine pages and make the envelopes. The one above is for my brother and sister-in-law, who are the kind of fashionable young couple pictured. I found some great Tiffany's ads that included lots of lips and nekkidness (great for V Day, right?) and, as below, some cool NYC black and white ads for my best friend Roo and his partner. I used a purple Sharpie to just write right across the ad after the envelope was done. (I glued them after folding them and used office sticky dots to seal). 

 

The best magazine score was a couple of straight-up silver card-stock ads from Nordstrom. Perfect envelopes for my parents' card. I will never look at magazines the same way again, I tell ya. They are a hot bed of creativity waiting to happen. :)

Below is my favorite envelope, a gorgeous Cartier ad which I used to send a Valentine to my best friend in SC, and her family. I kind of love that I get the prestige of the Cartier name and the beautiful sentiment of their famous ring, without spending anything. Since I had stamps already, and glue, and a pen, and magazines, and cards, and paper, and office sticky dots, my total expenditure to tell all these folks I love them? $0. Or priceless. You know, whichever. 

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all! oxox  

 

Comments

[Melarina]

Oooooooh! So pretty! Very, very impressed with your resourcefulness and superb taste. Can't wait to see it in person. I feel so honored! xoxoxoxo