My Valentines

This is going to be a long post, because I have a lot to share with you. This year I got things in gear early enough to not only send out valentines cards to my parents and sister (and they arrived on time!!) but I also made gifts for the girls. One thing that helped was that I used the same basic design for each of the cards. I am also pleased to tell you that I used up the paper with circles cut out that I had left over from the cards I made for Cards for Hospitalized Kids (the guitar-playing dog). The card above was for my father. The white hearts are by Posh Impressions (a border stamp). The cat is by Eat Cake  Graphics. I stamped him twice, once on plain white paper, and once on patterned paper, to which I added some more dots and some hearts, using a ZIG pen. I think the ladybug sticker is by Stickopotamus, but I might be wrong. The hearts on the red cardstock in all of the cards were inked with VersaMark ink and embossed with white embossing powder. All sentiments were done on the computer. All coloring of images was done with Prismacolor pencils.

My sister's card used a heart stamp by Close to My Heart. The bunny is by Darcie's country Folk.

My mother's card uses a heart by Pacific Stamp Exchange (now sadly out of business) and a bear stamp from Darcie's.

The card on the left was for Liat, and uses a heart stamp by CTMH. The lion stamp is from Stampin Up! and the crown sticker is by Mrs. Grossmans. The hearts on Meital's card (on right) are by Darcie's and the elephant is from the same SU set as the lion.

I would never use "sticker sneeze" (doesn't it just look like that, lol?) on a card, but I figure anything goes on an envelope. I made the pillow gift boxes using a template I found on the Internet. I printed it onto cardstock, then coated the back of the cardstock with glue from a gluestick. I adhered CTMH paper to the back, then scored and cut out the template. The flower stamp is also by CTMH, and was stamped onto watercolor paper that had been colored with Distress Inks and then spritzed with water. The purple embossing powder is by Stampendous. 

I made fingerless mitts for the girls using the leftover yarn from their favorite socks. Meital's was Regia Silk, and as you can see I even had a tiny bit left from each 50 gram skein, after making one sock and one mitt from each skein. I think this will be a great way to use up all of the leftover yarn from making standard ladies' size socks. The mitt pattern is based on a free pattern on Ravelry called Mitt Envy, though I left out the cable decoration. If you are on Ravelry, you can find my detailed notes on my project page.

And last but not least, here are Liat's mitts. I was worried (as it turns out, possibly for no good reason) that I wouldn't have enough yarn, so I added some blue of the same yarn as a design element. The yarn (both colors) is Piedmont Yarn's Oakland Wildsocks, a very nice yarn. While Meital got her Valentine's Day card and gift when she came down for breakfast, Liat didn't get hers until late afternoon. Good thing because I didn't finish these until late morning on Friday!

If you stuck it out all the way until the end, thank you! I hope all of you had a great Valentine's Day and a lovely weekend.