Happy Valentine's Day!

Today, as I enjoy being showered with chocolate, flowers, and love from my valentine, I wonder why guys ever go along with this holiday. Today I received chocolates, a huge bouquet of flowers, and some cookies that I was begging for when we went to the store last week :-) And what did he get in return? Yep, you guessed it! A card. What else are you supposed to give a guy for Valentine's Day? Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVE hand-made cards (obviously...why else would I be a Stampin' Up! demonstrator?), but I felt bad as he bought me gifts, took me out to dinner, paid for a movie...and I handed him a card. Oh well! I guess it's just a good day to be a girl! :-)

Speaking of my made-with-love card that I gave to my wonderful hubby...



This is what I spent several hours working on this afternoon. Yes, several hours. As you can see from the picture, the "Love you much" stamp on the front of the card is embossed with silver embossing powder and then colored in with a red marker. For the record, I HATE red. No, wait. I like the color red, but I hate all the havoc it wreaks in my life. It bleeds in the washing machine turning things pink, so I have to do extra loads of laundry just to protect the rest of my clothes. When stamping, it NEVER dries (I might as well be using craft ink!), plus it always ends up on my hands, face, clothes...you know. Like glitter! Anyway, the "Love you much" part on the front of this card I made four...that's right...four different times. The last time, I stamped it, embossed it, put it on the card, then colored it in hoping that I could somehow avoid smearing the red ink. I swear I never touched the red ink, but little red fingerprints kept creating themselves out of nowhere! After I took this picture of the front of my card, I simply opened it to take a picture of the inside:



However, when I closed the card back up, a little red fingerprint had fabricated itself onto my white card stock...grrr. I guess life isn't perfect, so neither is my valentine's card this year. Oh well. Coloring in those letters for the fifth time today was NOT going to happen :-)

*whew* Enough with my ranting over red ink. I actually really like this card, but for some reason I don't think the picture does it justice. It looks really neat in real life, but the picture makes it look a little boring. I got the idea for my card from my mom's upline, Annette, on her blog.

Since Ben's favorite colors are red and silver, I decided to make his card in those colors instead of using the ever-popular red, pink, and brown. Also, since I LOVE my new Texturz Plates, I just had to use them again! To get a little more dimension on the right side of my card, I ran the card stock through my Big Shot using the Swirl plate from the Backgrounds #1 Texturz Plates set. It just didn't have the dramatic look I was hoping for, so I took my brayer and inked the Texturz Plate with Riding Hood Red ink. When I ran my cardstock through on the inked plate, it gave me this:



I LOVE it! Yay! Exactly what I wanted! I hope Ben enjoys his Valentine's Day as much I have :-)

Stamp Set: Love You Much
Colors: Riding Hood Red, Brushed Silver, Whisper White
Accessories: Big Shot, Backgrounds #1 Texturz Plates, silver embossing powder, silver stretchy cord, Riding Hood Red taffeta ribbon

Happy Stamping!