Valentine Rakarama

well since most of you have received yours i feel i can post this years edition. I've been sending my dear girlfriends valentines the last few years and i just couldnt let this year be the year i didn't. Yeah i had other crap going on (i always have some nonsense going on that keeps me from making things!) - but these ladies - well you all mean so much to me. I have been the recipient of many lovely cards and gifts from them. I had to do it. I was dying to do it :-)

Other years i usually had something in mind when i made my valentines. The first year i saw a darling fabric in a local store - looked like vintage valentines. I didnt keep a picture of those unfortunately but i do have some of the fabric left. The next year i made these

and last year i made this one
This year - well i wasn't sure what i would do. I was looking online at a cute project made by Michele of Purple Onion Designs - check it out here - http://www.purpleoniondesigns.com/vintagestamps3.html - scroll down to the wonderful slide mount hanging with her faboo vintage calendar stamp. The papers or stamps she used on that made me think of this lovely stamp from StampinUp! - floral background stamp. I added Purple Onions script stamp as well as the mini-sentiments stamps - and voila - i had my card.

I should mention the valentine gods were working against me - i ran out of clear embossing powder while i was making these. (amazing - do you really ever run out of ep? i swear i didnt think it possible but i'm here to say - yes you can use it all up!) I should qualify that. I ran out of my pristine clear embossing powder (my pristine jar - has no other ep's mixed into it. early on i found that when you emboss sometimes you get little bits of powder stuck in your ep tray - and it taints the stuff you put into it on the next ep adventure. My solution to this problem was to get another ep tray that i only use for clear ep'ing. yes that's just how anal retentive i can be!) so i had to use my less than pristine jar on the last few cards. i cringed on the last few cards hoping no bits of silver ep would get into it. nothing seemed to really show - especially since i did a white wash of acrylic over the ep... did any of you notice the white wash? anyway... i had an extra little heart with bow and decided i'd add a little card to my son's valentine box (i made him his favorite cookies - oatmeal chocolate chip) here's that silly monkey again
if i get back to this blog later today (two posts already and i'm considering a third.. yegods!) i will post a little cd holder i made for mdv for his gift (a cd of our songs)