FaveCrafts

1000s of free craft projects, home decor ideas and DIY tips

Valentine Hugs and Kisses Card

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Valentine’s day is on its way so get started on your Valentine gifts and cards. The best way to go is to make your own Valentine’s day cards to send your friends, they’ll love getting it in the mail. One of our guest contributors, Marty Shipley of Paper Artistry, sent in a really cute Valentine’s day card to share.

The Valentine hugs and kisses card is easy to make. You can use cardstock, patterned paper and ribbon to create this fun card. This project even includes a nice tip about how to work with lumpy embellishments. This card might take some time to make so start as soon as you can. You have 11 days left!

To see more of Marty’s neat Valentine creations you can check her out at her Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/paperartistry Good luck and Happy Valentine’s Day!

How to: Easy Valentine Crafts to Make

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Not everyone likes the holiday of love, but I love Valentine’s Day. I know it’s more of a Hallmark holiday, but I’m cheesy like that. I’ve been lucky enough to have my valentine for seven years now and only many more years to look forward to. A few years ago when we were in college we decided not to buy each other Valentine’s gifts, but instead we had to get creative. There are so many easy Valentine crafts to make out there. I was so proud of what I made.

There is no specific name for what I made, but I’m going to call it a CD ornament. It’s so easy to make even your kids can help make it. Here’s what you need:

  • A blank CD or an old recycled CD
  • Pink, Purple and Red Tissue Paper
  • Glitter
  • Glue
  • A photo of you and your valentine
  • Magazine cutouts- letters like x and o, hearts, etc.
  • Stickers- hearts, kisses, x’s and o’s
  • String

This really does sound like a lot of materials for such a little craft, but you can pick and choose what you want to use and how you want to make it. Easy Valentine crafts to make always involve short and easy steps:

  1. Cut or tear tissue paper into little pieces.
  2. Roll each piece of tissue paper into a ball.
  3. Put a dab of glue on either side of the CD. Make sure you only do this around the edges.
  4. Glue the rolled pieces of tissue paper onto the CD creating a circle around the whole thing.
  5. You can then glue your picture in the middle of the CD or on the other side with a cute little message.
  6. Take you magazine cutouts and glue them on CD.
  7. Place stickers anywhere you wish.
  8. Dab glue in any spot to apply the glitter.
  9. Once it’s all dry you can then thread the string through the middle of CD and tie for a loop
  10. Hang anywhere you wish.

Keep in mind you can add whatever embellishments you wish. You can use the magazine letters to write little notes like I love you or Be Mine. I loved making this craft because not only was it super cheap, but it had meaning behind it. Handcrafting is always the most precious gift you can give. If you have a better idea or something even craftier let me know!

You can also try some of these easy Valentine crafts to make:
Ultra Frost Heart Votives
Kids’ Valentine Box
Candy Bouquet
Crepe Paper Rose Bouquet

A Simple Guide to Rubber Stamping

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You can become an artist with a stamp, ink, and a little color from chalks, pastels, watercolors, markers, or colored pencils! Rubberstamping is a technique used to create greeting cards, home décor items, collage, apparel embellishment and so much more.

1. You’ll need a rubber stamp or two. There are traditional wood mount rubber stamps and the next generation of stamping, the clear stamp. Clear stamps are unmounted meaning that you will need an acrylic mount to place the clear stamp image upon to stamp with it. You can also buy rubber stamp images that are unmounted. Experiment with mounted and unmounted stamps. Paper artists tend to prefer the clear unmounted since this type of stamp makes image placement very easy (you can see where you are going to stamp the image through the acrylic mounts) and storage takes up less space than the traditional wood mounted stamps.

2. Next you’ll need some ink. There are two types of basic ink. The first is pigment, which is a slow drying ink and the second is dye ink, which is fast drying. Dye inks are more colorful than pigment inks, but only pigment inks are opaque. You’ll also need pigment ink if you decide that you want to emboss an image.  There are a rainbow of colors available in both kinds of inks, but black, gold, silver, red, and blue are the most popular of ink colors.

3. Ink rubberstamp by tapping the ink pad to the image making sure the entire image is inked. Stamp directly down to your surface (paper, wood, acetate, and more). Do not rock or shake the stamp, but lift directly up. You’ll have a crisp, clean image with no smudges. Practice several times when stamping on a new surface to determine the pressure needed to get that crisp image. Note that rubber stamps do give a better detailed image than clear stamps. This is because the rubber is slightly harder than the material used to create the clear stamps.

4. Once an image is stamped you can color it with a huge variety of coloring tools. You can use chalks and pastels by brushing or rubbing the color onto the image. You can watercolor with watercolor pencils or paint, again brushing on the color. You can also use colored pencils and markers.

Rubber stamping can easily become a passion since it is so easy to do and you’ll have wonderful projects completed in less than an hour. Check out these fun rubber stamping projects:

Papercraft Butterfly Card– This is a great card to send to a friend; it’s easy to make.
Recycled Jewelry– Save the environment by recycling and reusing jewelry.
Decorative Clay Pot Patterns– Decorate your clay pots any way you wish.

Crochet

Jewelry

Knitting

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Sewing

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