DIY: Valentine's Day impressions

A friend of mine uses scrapbooking tools and materials to produce Christmas and birthday cards that are real keepers.  So why not one or two for Valentine's Day? 

Scrapbooking was originally only practiced for preserving family history and memorable moments, but has expanded since about 2001 into an industry that supports making cards, invitations, and artwork-- including steampunk and digital. A nice piece of digital scrapbooking was found at ArtFire.

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"Tiny Moments #4," Chili Designz

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There are many websites offering supplies, such as paper, cardstock, stamps, inks, and pretty little doodads, to add to your design. Some are Papersource (mostly offers kits), Amazon (search on 'scrapbooking'), and Michaels. 

You can find a number of design ideas and kits for Valentine's Day at Scrapbook. Here's a sample.

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Sanna Lippert, "Live in the Moment," Scrapbook

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PaperSource has a selection of kits, crafts, stamps, stickers, and card ideas. There is a selection of steampunk stamps available at Pinkflamingo61 on ArtFire.

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 Steampunk wood mounted rubber stamp, pinkflamingo61

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Now, who to send one to?

-- Marge

DIY: Valentines, pro and con

Since Valentine's Day is approaching fast, here are some resources for making your own cards or using online resources to send an e-card.  I've noticed a lot of anti-valentine cards and sentiments this year, so they're included.  Keep in mind that most sites offering e-cards mostly just want your email address, thus the option to spam you.

Blue Mountain offers free, printable cards; Egreetings (a subsidiary of American Greetings) will send a free ecard for you.  The designs are, well, cute. Jukebox will print your cards in quantity (there's an option for digital output in PDF form) for a price and send them to you. What's interesting about the Jukebox site is the discussion in their FAQ of paper stock and coatings.

For projects Inhabitots has "6 Adorable DIY Valentine’s Day Cards to Make for Your Love." Here's a sample.

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Paint Chip Valentine Bookmarks, Inhabitots

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For some punny fun take a look at Buzzfeed's "30 Punny Valentines For Everyone You Love." I like this one:

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Buzzfeed

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And if you really want to get down to the nitty-gritty of romance, take a look at "Nasty, funny, FREE Anti-Valentine's Day cards" at StudentBeans.  You can download these cards as PDF files for printing and giving.  The sample below was extracted from the PDF.  There's a section near the bottom of the page titled ....and here's what can happen that you may want to check out.

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Sample anti-Valentine, StudentBeans

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-- Marge