A Valentine Card

I always make a valentine card for my husband, but of course, traditionally, valentines must be anonymous, and so it's never signed! (I'm pretty sure he know who is 'secret admirer' is, though!)

This year, I decided to do a mainly stitched card.

The heart frame came from a book I bought recently called 101 Ideas for Embroidery on Paper by Erica Fortgens. I bought it from Amazon, and I was a little disappointed in it. The front cover of the book is full of various stitched borders and I thought it was exactly what I wanted. In fact, there are no actual borders inside. There are some frames, including some square and rectangular frames which I can adapt, but no actual borders. More irritating is the fact that some of the ideas rely on buying separate brass stencils with pricking patterns on them. Still, I decided there are enough ideas that I'll use, so I'll be keeping the book.

I had to increase the size of the heart circle, which I did by photocopying at 1.41 of the original size (equivalent to blowing A5 up to A4). I pricked some mirror card, and stitched it with some red thread that I think is intended for machine embroidery but which I think works perfectly on paper.

The plain border on the matting was done using the new (to me at least) Sew Easy from Making Memories. I bought the handle and a few pricking wheels from Hobbycraft, and was very disappointed with the result. Using a pricking mat I already owned or a foam mouse mat, I either got no pricking or the card got so mangled it wasn't usable. I decided to give the thing one more chance, and bought the pricking mat designed for the purpose, and had much better results. It will still work best on paper that's really too thin for stitching on, but it can be made to work with 'normal' card, providing you don't try to use one of the more complicated wheels. The straight line wheel that I used here, and one that does a blanket-stitch type effect worked well. The one that's supposed to put little circles of holes - I think it's called 'burst' or 'starburst' just won't work.

Here, I pricked some card, then matted it onto gold mirror board, and then I went round and pricked the holes right into the lower layer before back stitching using gold thread.

The sentiment was created in Photoshop Elements and cut with a scalopped circle nesitbility die.

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:


Allsorts where they want one or more hearts
Di's Digis where they want valentines,
One Stop Crafts where they want stitching,
My Sheri Crafts where they want something new (new book and new Sew Easy)
Stamp, Scrap and Doodle where anything goes,
Mami Doodles where they want something for a loved one,
The Poodles Parlour where they want love/valentine projects,
Stamping with the Dragon where anything goes,
Wags n Whiskers where the theme is love/valentines,
Craft Us Crazy where the theme is 'full of love'