A Double Valentine – For You and Someone You Love

There’s enough stress in life.  Planning for Valentine’s day doesn’t have to add another layer of stress. That’s where the Valentine Fabric Card comes in.

How do you like the idea of having a double valentine gift in one shot? When I say “double valentine”, I mean a valentine you give that gives back to you.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to get that for yourself with the Valentine Fabric Card.

Previously, I introduced the idea of creating fabric cards to actualize your ideas to you. The size of fabric cards make them easy for you to experiment, try out ideas and be playful.  All of these are important for developing creatively.

Today, I want to show how to create another fabric card.  This one is for Valentine’s day. From a few simple supplies you already have around your home, you can add some creativity to your life, reduce stress, and make the recipient of your card feel truly special.

This is a project you can do by yourself, with your children or grandchildren, with a group of kids at camp, or kids in a classroom, with seniors in their senior centers or their retirement communities. It’s a simple, fun and inexpensive project for all ages.

Here we go:

Valentine Fabric Card Supplies

• All-purpose Glue
• Marbled fabric (Or other pretty fabric)
• A pair of scissors
• Ribbon
• Cut-out fabric flowers (Or other embellishments)
• Plain greeting card (Or cardstock folded in two)
• Plain envelope

Here’s a little note about the supplies above.

The first note is about the fabric.

The fabric is the star of this project. Marbled fabrics  have really beautiful patterns and work very well in this project. ( Want to learn how to marble fabrics? Learn how to marble fabrics here).  Having said that you can use any beautiful fabric for this project.

The second is the cut-out fabric flowers

I drew the flowers and colored them with fabric markers then cut them out.  You can do the same, or alternatively, use a fabric that already has flowers in it and cut out a few flowers for this project. I used three flowers in total.

Okay, now let’s get to it.

Creating The Valentine Fabric Card

Cut out about half of the front cover of the greeting card as shown above.

Hold on to this half heart, we’re going to use it as a template to cut out a couple of heart shapes.

Both the outer front cover and inside front cover are looking nice now. We’ve got ourselves a reversible fabric heart.

That’s it.  We’re done with the card. You can add text to it in your own handwriting, or use a stencil or stamps.

Creating The Valentine Fabric Envelope

The envelope is usually an afterthought. When you’re choosing a card to send to a loved one, the last thing you look at is the envelope. Right? You want to go straight to the card and look at the cover and see the words inside. However, although, the envelope is the last thing you think about when you’re sending a card, it’s the first thing the receiver notices even before they see the card and read the words. 

So, I do like to spend time on the crafting a beautiful envelope just as I do with the greeting card itself.

So, here’s how we’re going to transform this plain envelope.

Now when the recipient receives your card, they’ll not have to wait to open the envelope before they know how special they are. They can tell right from the bat. And that’s a really good feeling.

Every time I make a fabric card for someone the reaction is the same. They find it so thoughtful and they cherish the card like a piece of artwork or heirloom. I’ve never seen one tossed into the trash. People appreciate the effort and the thought that goes into making them a card by hand.

So, there you have it.

Did you enjoy this tutorial? What variation of this will you create as you explore your own creativity? Who do you plan on doing this project with?

Love yourself and supercharge your own creativity by making a valentine fabric card. Then, express your love for someone by giving them the card you make. It’s a win-win.

And don’t forget to take it further by making it a triple win-win-win. Share this project with someone who will enjoy doing it with their own loved ones. Spread the love.

Happy Valentine’s.

Love you.

PS: Post your projects on social media and tag me, so that I can see your lovely work.

I’ve been working my way back to starting a big project. I’ve not done a hands-on big project in a while and that means getting back into the swing of things again has been a slow process.  To help me not stay stuck I started with a small custom stationery project. And slowly, I’ve worked my way back to a bigger project.

This project is still not as big as my usual size (it’ll probably end up being a 24″ square). But I find that starting small is a sure way to get back to big.  So I’m not trying to rush it. In fact, I’m allowing myself to play a lot with this piece (you’ll soon see what I mean a little later). I’m doing this because I believe playfulness helps you get creative.

So let’s see what I’ve started work on. Not much so far, but still some progress.

I changed things up a little this time.  Usually, I start with a sketch in my sketchbook and then later project an enlarged image of the drawing on fabric.  But this time I decided to draw directly onto fabric.  This was challenging because the fabric slips a lot when you’re drawing on it.

To help minimize that, I tapped my fabric to a board to make it steady.

When  I see this drawing it makes me really happy.   Because a few years ago, my process used to involve tracing photos.  I didn’t dare draw myself.  I’ll be honest with you, I’m still learning to draw.  I haven’t arrived yet. Sometimes, I get so frustrated with myself and question why I don’t make it easy on myself and just go ahead and trace.  But the prospect of the joy, I’ll get if I can successfully draw my subject keeps me trying harder.

Below, you’ll see how I struggled with getting the jaw and ear just the way I wanted them to be.

Next, I decided on my color scheme. I usually have a dominant color, primary (accent) color and some neutrals. Here’s what I decided to use.

Here you can see the proportions in which I intend to use my colors.

So, what’s the next step for me?  Where do I plan to take this sketch?  I’m playing a lot as you can see. One of my plans is to use the circles as a feature in the background of my sketch.  

Then I’ll draw the sketch with my sewing machine using thread. That’s all I know for now.  I’ll figure out the rest as I go.

As a creative, it’s important to have your own creative process so you can get up and running as fast as you can with things that are familiar/predictable to you.  Yet your process should be flexible enough to allow for serendipity, getting off-track, trying new things and making some happy accidents. In short, make room for creativity.

Question:

Do you have a process for creating your projects?  How do you get started? Share your thoughts below.

Warmest Regards,

Handwriting is Cathartic

In this article, I’m going to teach you how to make your own fabric embellished greeting card step-by-step PLUS a video to help you see the steps in action. [Scroll down for the video]

Did you have a pen pal when you were younger?  I didn’t have one but when I was in high school, my best friend left to go and study abroad.  And it was so hard for me to see her go. But what made it possible for me to cope with her absence was that we wrote to each other every week. I started by writing her a letter just before she left and I continued every week after. 

My daughter went away to school this fall, and I know I’m going to miss her a lot.  So remembering my previous experience from years back, I’ve decided I’ll write to her often to help me not miss her too much.  

Someone told me her mother wrote one hundred nineteen (119) letters to her during her first year in school.  I’m not planning on coming close to that record.

But I do love writing especially, with my hands.  And I don’t do that type of writing very much these days.  So this is a good opportunity for me to get back to writing this way. I enjoy both writing and receiving handwritten notes. I can only hope my daughter does too. 🙂

To kick off my writing I made my own greeting cards by embellishing them with fabric.  I’ve wanted to do this (a fabric embellished greeting card) for the longest time.  But there hadn’t been a good incentive to do so until now.

I bought a pack of blank greeting cards from A.C. Moore. They carry white cards, ivory colored cards, and multi-colored cards. I decided to go for the ivory cards. I bought a pack of 50.

Making Fabric Embellished Greeting Cards

I didn’t have a plan for how I was going to do this.  All I knew was I wanted to draw as well as use a collage of fabric circles. So I started by drawing a cup.

When I don’t know where to start a project, I usually start with what I know, what is familiar and then I push off from there with some more challenging stuff.

After drawing the cup, I tried to use my micron pens to draw some circles, but I wasn’t very successful there. I couldn’t get a good rhythm going.  So I jumped to cutting out the circular shapes from my fabric scraps.  That went quite well.  Because it didn’t really require much thinking.

Then I started to glue the fabric collage pieces to the front of the card. I love improvisations and abstract work because they call on you using your understanding of the principles and elements of good design, which I find fascinating. Although these are standard rules, you get to interpret them in your own way and that’s what makes every person’s work unique.

So I spent some time creating a composition with my fabric pieces and my cup drawing. Since cutting the fabric circles was a repetitive process which didn’t require much thinking, it allowed my subconscious to work on ideas for drawing the circles I’d previously abandoned. By the time I’d done a bit of gluing, my mind was racing with ideas for drawing circles.

Between cutting, gluing and drawing, I made my first fabric embellished greeting card. I’m so happy with it. I hope my daughter loves it. 

Creativity Lesson

I haven’t created anything big for a while.  Too much going on in my life right now.  What with my kids’ new educational adventures, managing a regional exhibition, writing articles, and creating courses. But standing still makes your skills rust. So I’m not standing still. Working small is better than not making anything at all.

If you find yourself in the season of life, where you don’t have much capacity to make big things then:

Start Small!

No mater what you do, 

Don’t Stand Still!

Making Fabric Embellished Greeting Cards [Video Tutorial]

Here’s the video tutorial. Watch and enjoy, then leave a comment letting me know what you think!

Question:

Do you like hand-writing letters? Have you ever made a fabric embellished greeting card? What do you think of my first fabric embellished greeting card? Can’t wait to read your comments.

My Warmest Regards,