For My Valentine

I made this card for my DH on Valentine's Day. I needed it to be relatively simple as I started it that morning and wanted to finish before he woke up. I had to do a do-over with the buckle chipboard once, because I bent it and smudged the ink...the joys of working with the slower drying craft ink!

I used the Kraft paper for the base. The chipboard buckle and heart are from Stampin' Up's On Board chipboard. I started by using Whisper White craft ink to cover the buckle. I did it a couple times, heat setting it with my heat gun in between coats (it still doesn't completely set this way, but it helps reduce mess, oh, and it smoked just a little bit...hehe). Once I was satisfied that it wouldn't get any whiter, I used my Real Red craft ink and the hearts stamp from the hostess set "A Little Bit of Happiness" to apply over the white ink, then I clear embossed over that so that the red inked image became raised and shiny (hard to see in this photo). The heart was inked thoroughly with the real red craft ink and clear embossed twice to give a glossy finish. This changes the true red color a bit, so I opted for the Bravo Burgandy 1/4" grosgrain ribbon to attach the buckle to the card (I also secured the buckle to the paper with some Sticky Strip). The heart was attached to the cardstock with a couple Stampin' Dimensionals. I used a favorite retired stamp inside the card with the sentiment: "I love you more today than yesterday, but less today than I will tomorrow".