Saturday, February 9

Embossed Thumbprint Valentines

Last year was a great Valentine's Day. I was in London, I got roses, I got pearls, I got a sweet little note . . . I was one happy girl. This year, I don't have a boyfriend (and, let's face it, my chances of having a "romantic" Valentine's Day are 764-1), so I was feeling a little down. But then I decided that Valentine's Day is about love -- not always romantic love, just love in general. Instead of worrying about not having a Valentine, I'm planning to spend my time making sure other people get something on Valentine's Day and know that I appreciate them.

:)

So just in case anyone needs a little help finding a pretty/classy/not-necessarily-romantic Valentine's Day card, I thought I'd share what I came up. I wanted to avoid the classic red/pink/frilly theme just because none of these cards are really meant to be romantic, so instead I decided black and gold is always classy and I went with that. I wish the pictures I have were a little more high-quality, but there's seriously no sun today (depressing) and that made taking pictures difficult. Just imagine what these babies could look like if the weather cooperated with me...


Supplies Used:
  • Cardstock (any color would work I think, but I chose white)
  • Inkpad (I used gold, but again, use what you have)
  • Embossing powder (again . . . color's up to you. I chose gold, but red would be valentines-y too)
  • Confetti (totally optional, but makes it way more fun!)
First, print off your cards. You can make your own, or you can use mine. Cut them out (I trimmed around the black border on mine -- I don't like a lot of white space on the edges).
Press your thumb onto your ink pad and then down on your card. You'll need to make two thumprints -- angle them so that they make a heart shape. I tried to take a picture of this step, but my gold ink didn't really show up on the paper so there wasn't much to see. Do this pretty quickly and then sprinkle embossing powder over the prints.
Shake the excess powder onto a piece of paper so you can collect the leftovers and put them back into the bottle.
Now it's time to emboss. The best way to emboss is with a heat gun, but I don't have one, so I just turned on the stove and held the card over the heat. It takes a little experimentation to get it right (I may or may not have singed a little black mark onto one of my cards). Hold it for a few seconds, turn it over and look at it, then put it over the stove/candle for a bit longer if it doesn't look ready. The powder should melt and kind of bubble up so your prints have a raised, three-dimensional quality. This isn't a great picture, but hopefully you can kind of see that the thumbprint is "embossed" now.
Once you're done with this, you can write your messages inside the cards. When I was done, I filled the cards with gold confetti and then put them in their envelopes.
And voila . . . fancy sparkly homemade valentines. I'm in love with snail mail and I haven't gotten any since back in the good old days when I was writing a missionary. So I went a little crazy with sending these out. One for my little brother in Chile . . . 
And a few for everyone else. Right after I sent these off I found the most perfect envelopes in a box of my old school stuff. They were white on the outside, but the entire inside of the envelopes were pink. Gah. One hour too late . . .
If I had more stamps, I would have stamped/embossed the outside of the envelopes too (maybe in little hearts or stars?) But these got the job done. Just in case you like the "thumbprint" idea but aren't crazy about the black and gold, here a few other thumbprint valentine options:


Good luck with your Valentine's Day planning!

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