Valentine Craft Roundup

I’ve realized that every year I say I don’t decorate for Valentine’s Day, and then every year some craft comes around that I just have to try, and sure enough, I’ve decorated for the holiday.

This year, three projects made their way into my crafterday afternoons:

Faux watercolor cards. While technically not a Valentine’s Craft, I combined this technique with my favorite thing – a pun – to make a cheery card. This also let me work on my brush lettering and doodling challenges that I’m doing this year.

This super cute garland tugged at my tyopography heart strings. The original post features a different technique; I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the large letter “U” to make my hearts. (It’s Helvetica Neu Bold Condensed if you are keeping score at home). Strung with red and white baker’s twine, it looks happy over my fireplace.

This polka dot technique is more popular as a Sharpie craft on mugs, but I used it to make a gift card holder.

Make your own gift card holder

To make your own gift card holder you will need a template for the envelope, a scrap of paper for the heart shape, a sheet of card stock for the envelope and markers. And a gift card 🙂

The website templatemaker.nl is my go to source for box and envelope templates.  After plugging in some measurements into the “Mailer” template, a PDF is ready for download. This can be printed onto cardstock and cut by hand. You can also download a DXF file which Silhouette Studio can open.

Once the cutting is complete, I cut with scissors a small heart shape. You can cut this out of any scrap paper since in the end it will be discarded. Using a very small, not very sticky bit of tape, stick the shape down on the panel that will be the front of the envelope. My personal process for making not very sticky tape is to pat it on my fuzzy sweatshirt. The goal is to have something to hold down the heart shape enough to marker over it, but not so much that it tears when it is removed.

Using a fat marker, start dotting around the heart shape. At first, space the dots pretty wide so that you can add in the other colors.

Then add in more dots of different colors so the shape will be obvious when the cutout is removed.

Finally fill in the entire envelope with dots.

And then remove the cutout! This particular envelope folds up and does not require any glue or tape to stay closed.

This post will be linked at some of these great parties.