An Unlikely Combination For a Valentine

What do a tree, watercolors, ribbon, snowflakes and Valentine's Day have to do with each other?

They all came up on the BINGO card challenge at the Handcrafted Greetings Forum, that's what!  The challenge is to make a card with at least four out of the five items that make up a bingo.
This was a tough challenge and forced me to do a lot of thinking and planning! How was I supposed to use all that stuff on ONE card? Especially the snowflakes and hearts, then I thought to myself, "Valentine's day IS in the Winter, so it's really not too much of a stretch, but what about that tree?"

Then I remembered an old four seasons stamp set from PaperWishes and the rest was pretty easy.

I used Tin Pail in to stamp the onto a 3" x 3.5" panel cut from watercolor paper. I painted the trunk and branches with a brown watercolor pencil. After that, I re-stamped the tree using clear pigment, added some clear pigment across the bottom of the panel and embossed it with holographic embossing powder. For a little added dimension, I stamped the tree with clear pigment again and embossed it with clear embossing powder.  Once that was done, I used a light blue watercolor wash for the background, then I stamped a few more snowflakes with clear pigment and embossed them with holographic embossing powder. I mounted it on a 3 1/4" x 3 3/4" Candy Applie rectangle and popped it up on a 3 7/8" x 5 3/8" Whip Cream panel.  I added a gold ribbon from my stash to the bottom of the panel and popped that up on a 4" x 5" card base.  I stamped the Happy Valentine's Day sentiment from the FSJ Annual Celebration stamp set onto a white tag with Candy Apple ink and mounted that on a scrap of Candy Apple cardstock and cut around it leaving a narrow border.
I think it turned out well.

Bicycle Get Well Greeting

Here's a card to make for a bicycle loving friend who is feeling under the weather.

All of the items I used are from my stash and while some, like the bicycle, are no longer available, I've included links to the products I used as well as alternatives at the end of this post.

Materials List:

• Paper Wishes Bicycle cutting die
• Flowers from my stash
• Unbranded Tree Embossing folder
• Green and brown Pan Pastels from the Mother Nature set.
• Blue, Whip Cream, Brush Silver, Black Licorice, Candy Apple and brown cardstock.
• Double stick foam squares
• Stampabilities Everyday Expressions stamp set

I cut the bicycle from red, black and brush silver cardstock and layered them starting with the silver on the bottom.  I cut away the pieces of the red and black layers and glued them to the silver layer.

The tree was made with an unbranded embossing folder. I embossed it onto pale blue cardstock and colored it with Mother Nature PanPastels.  The dirt path is just a strip of brown cardstock.  I added some flowers to the basket, then popped the bicycle up on foam squares. I could have made punched flowers but I've had those flowers for 15 years or more.  They needed to be used!

The sentiment is from Stampabilities Everyday Expressions that I picked up at Hobby Lobby last week.  I think I will be using it a lot.  It has over 60 words on it.  I stamped it onto Whip Cream cardstock with Black Licorice ink and cut around it with my detail scissors.