Lovebirds for Valentine's Day

Hi there, it's Sarah here!  It's now time for me to inspire you with a male themed card for Valentine's Day. My thoughts were drawn to something fairly plain and simple with not too many ribbons or glittery things. I then decided on this lovely lovebird stamp and decided to create something with a sense of movement to it! Here's how to make it…












































































STEP 1:
Using Wow Embossing Stampset1 - Is It A Bird

Stamp the lovebird onto white card using a clear ink pad and sprinkle Primary Ebony Wow Embossing Powder over the area that you have stamped. Tap off the excess powder then heat the card from below using a heat gun. You can see when the embossing powder has set as it turns glossy.

STEP 2:
A neat trick for creating a mirror image of a stamp is to use a lightbox (or a window) to trace the positive stamp image (trace the design on the reverse to get the mirrored image). I traced the image using a Wow Embossing Pen and then quickly heat embossed the design (with Primary Ebony Wow Embossing Powder) to get the mirror image of the stamp.
TIP: If you are using a different stamp range that doesn't come with an acetate sheet with the design printed onto it, heat emboss the stamped image that you want a mirror image of, and flip it over on the light box and trace the reverse.

STEP 3:
Using the Wow Embossing Pen, colour in the heart (within the lovebird stamp) and then heat emboss with Apple Red Wow Embossing Powder.
Use a fine pencil to lightly draw a line around the two stamped birds. This pencil line provides a guide to follow as you use scissors to cut around the heat embossed lovebirds.

STEP 4:
Punch a medium sized heart from the white card and triple heat emboss with Apple Red Wow Embossing Powder
TIP: To create a glossy heart embellishment, I pressed the heart shape onto a clear ink pad and covered with the embossing powder. The trick to layering the embossing powder and building up multiple coats is to work quickly. Once you have heated the first layer, quickly sprinkle over more powder and heat again and repeat this process a couple of times to get a thick glossy heart embellishment. Use long handled tweezers or flat nose pliers to grip the heart.

STEP 5:
Stamp a couple of the little heart stamps (from the same stamp set -  Wow Embossing Stampset1 - Is It A Bird) and heat emboss using Apple Red Wow Embossing Powder. Cut around them or use a small circle punch to easily punch them out.

STEP 6:
Cut a thin strip of acetate about 2.5mm wide and cut this into two strips about 120mm long.

STEP 7:
Take a square card 144mm x 144mm and using glue dots, attach the lovebirds and small hearts to the acetate strands and then attach these to the inside of the card. To make it look neater, I used small square pieces of the same background card to hide the area where the acetate strands are attached to the inside of the card.

STEP 8:
Attach the triple embossed heart embellishment somewhere in the middle of the card (near to where the lovebirds sit using thick mini foam pads. I decided on 'je t'aime' for the sentiment as I felt it suited the illustration style of the lovebirds. I hand wrote the sentiment on the front towards the bottom of the card. (If your don't feel that your freehand skills are up to this, you can find a template here that you can trace) Enjoy! :D



TA DA! A lovebird inspired Valentine's Day Card