Club Scrap Blog Hop - Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day (or belated Galentine's Day for you Parks and Rec fans).  What better way to share the love than on a Club Scrap blog hop?

If you found me through Tricia's blog, then you are following the hop! If you've lost your way or just want to see all the links in one place, head over to the Club Scrap blog to see a list of all the talented bloggers participating today.  You can even share your own lovely love creations with a link up on and giveaway the Club Scrap blog - make sure to read the how-to there and show off your stuff!

So, I am a procrastinator by nature, and my good friends from high school and I have been exchanging holiday cookies via the mail.  I had every intention of sending these out around, y'know, the holidays, but in between an interstate move and my decidedly slow rate of unpacking, I didn't get around to it.  So I thought I would send them as New Year's cookies.  Nope.  How about Groundhog's Day cookies? Errrr, not so much.  So I finally scheduled time on my calendar to make the darn things and they are now Valentine's Day cookies.  Of course they required Valentine's Day cards to accompany them.  Enter Club Scrap and their wonderful stamps!

Club Scrap has released several wonderful love-themed kits and stamps over the years (such as this year's Love Ink collection, and the previous Love Blooms and Love Bites sets), but their everyday stamps work just as well in creating beautiful Valentine's Day cards.   I have five cards I'll share with you today that showcase a lot of different stamps and techniques!

First up is a card that I made with a repeating phrase in ombre colors.  It's a pretty simple card, but I angled the phrase from Love Blooms to give it some interest.  I used my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig to make sure I was placing the words exactly where I wanted them.  I also used only three colors of ink on this card - I ended up with the five different shades by using both the first- and second-generation impressions of the stamp to get the lighter shades of each ink.  You can kind of tell that there were a few stray ink marks on the white paper, so instead of sending this panel to the circular file, I took three colors of watercolor pencils and my waterbrush and flicked the color from the nib of the pencil onto the paper.  It made for a pretty background and helped to cover up the ink.

The next card has a softer feel to it, especially since I used vellum as part of the cutout window on the front of the card.  I colored the image using this technique that again helped with keeping the image from Love Blooms soft and muted.

I used my trusty foam tape to prop up the top panel so the vellum could get a little light behind it.  I love the combination of the black embossed image and the softness of the color of the rose.

This card used a combination of a stamp from Love Bites and papers from various Club Scrap kits.  I first stamped the heart image on the papers I wanted to use, then fussy-cut around the image.  I used foam tape to give some dimension to the hearts.  This is a great way to use up any scraps you may have that you just can't bear to part with!

The next card just uses one of my favorite fonts that Club Scrap released.  It's very, very simple, but I love the result!  I find that if you make sure your repeating pattern goes off the page on the edges, it gives it a more put-together look. I always keep that in mind when making cards!  I really love how the pop of the neon pink sentiment looks against the gray pattern.

Finally, I couldn't make Valentine's Day cards for my gal pals and not include one for my boyfriend.  As he had to help me pack and unpack my scraproom, he knows how I feel about my crafting supplies and where he fits in.  This sentiment from Love Bites is just perfect!  I used the same stamp as I used on the third card to make the heart background, then I stamped the sentiment in India Black ink and also used black embossing powder to set it apart from the background.  Hope Jason likes it!  (ETA: He did.  He did say "...Most of your crafting supplies??"  Hahaha.)

Thanks for stopping by so I could show off the wonderful Valentine's Day collections from Club Scrap and I hope you might try your hand at recreating some of these cards for yourself!  Luckily for you, the Love Ink collection is still available in full, and you can get the stamp sets for Love Blooms and Love Bites, so run to the store and grab them before they are gone!  If you do create your own projects, be sure to link them up at the Club Scrap blog for a chance at an awesome prize!

Hop on over to the wonderfully creative and talented Hetty to see what lovely project she has to share with you.  Stop by throughout this month and on the 25th to see this month's collection London Calling being showcased and another blog hop!

Card #1 Supplies // Paper: Club Scrap: Red (Up, Up & Away), Teal (Lock & Key), White / Inks: Club Scrap: Ruby, Fuchsia, and Carnation Hybrid Inks, India Black Ink / Stamps: Club Scrap: Love Blooms / Tools: Inkadinkado Stamp-A-Ma-Jig, Foam tape, Watercolor pencils, Water brush

Card #2 Supplies // Paper: Club Scrap: White, Pink (Birds of a Feather); Recollections: vellum / Inks: Club Scrap: India Black Ink / Stamps: Club Scrap: Love Blooms / Tools: Foam tape, Heat gun, Black embossing powder, Embossing buddy, LePlume markers

Card #3 Supplies // Paper: Club Scrap: White, Red Handmade (Gratitude), Red plain (Peacock), Red pattern (Take Wing) / Inks: Club Scrap: India Black Ink / Stamps: Club Scrap: Love Bites / Tools: Cutterbee scissors

Card #4 Supplies // Paper: Club Scrap: Black (Matrix), White / Inks: Club Scrap: Ash and Neon Pink Hybrid Inks / Stamps: Club Scrap: Concrete Jungle Font Art / Tools: Inkadinkado Stamp-A-Ma-Jig

Card #5 Supplies // Paper: Club Scrap: White / Inks: Club Scrap: WOW Red Hybrid Ink, Ruby, Fuschia, and Carnation Hybrid Inks, India Black Ink / Stamps: Club Scrap: Love Bites / Tools: Inkadinkado Stamp-A-Ma-Jig, Heat gun, Black embossing powder, Embossing buddy