Simple Valentine’s Day Card Tutorial + FREE Cricut Design Space file link
While card making can certainly take a lot of time, money and equipment, not every card project has to be that way. This one can be done from as few items as
- card stock in two colors
- scissors or paper trimmer
- small heart punch
- butterfly punch
- Any alphabet stamp set and stamp pad in the color you wish
to use
- boning tool (or butter knife works too)
- glue (to attach the
small hearts to the butterfly piece)
- Double sided tape (to attach the paper layers together)
For those of you who already own a Cricut Explore machine and have access to Cricut Design Space’s monthly subscription – you are in luck. I will add a link to my project file towards the end of the post. If not, no problem, you can do this (similarly) without it.
If you don’t have any alphabet stamp sets – another alternative is to use Microsoft Word or other text editing software program to create the sentiment in the font and color of your choice. Then you can print out the page on cardstock and cut it to the size needed.
Shown below are many of the items I used to create these cards
– the label from Marco’s paper is there to show the exact type of white card
stock I used – Neenah Classic Crest Cardstock solar white 8 ½” x 11. This is the gold standard for many people
creating handmade cards, including those from many leading creative companies
design teams.
From left to right, I show a Fiskars basic heart punch, an
Ellentina butterfly die (which I used for the red butterfly), Darice embossing
folder with various size “bubbles”, the label for cardstock, an optional special
tool (silver tube with black screw to hold the Gelly Pens in the Cricut machine
– only needed if you plan to use a marker other than the ones Cricut
sells. It’s an adapter that allows you
to use many types of pens and markers – see link at end of post if you are
interested in purchasing. Also pictured
is the Cricut scoring tool if using the Explore machine. The red Gelly pen is from the Moonlight set and the rose gold one is from the Ice Cream Smooth set.
BTW….I am not getting
compensated for sharing this information or links – just providing for extra
convenience.
I started out by opening my design file in Design Space and
then cutting out the pieces on the Cricut machine. A screen shot of what my file looks like in
Design Space is below on the IOS app on my iPad. This is not a tutorial on how to use Design
Space so this tutorial assumes you already have knowledge of it. If you don’t and want to reach out to me, I
can provide resources from people on YouTube who have devoted lots of time on
teaching the basics.
Below is a picture of the adapter for the Cricut and Gelly
Roll pen when installed into the left hand side of the carriage. The little black plastic screw allows for
adjustment for a variety of pens as long as they are not larger than the
barrel. The manufacturer of this product
also offers a larger version, which can hold something as large as a Sharpie.
If you are going to cut out the pieces manually please read the next set of instructions below the next two images.
If you are cutting pieces manually, here are the suggested
sizes:
- Card base- 6 ½”H x 10 ½” W
- Middle layer (contrasting color) –
6”H x 4 ¾”W
- Top layer (same color as card
base) – 5 ½” H x 4 ½” W
- One die cut butterfly –
approximately 2 ½” H x 4”W, depending on whether you cut from a separate butterfly
punch, fussy cut from a traced outline of a butterfly, or die cut (like the
Ellentina die I used for the red card)
- Strip of white card stock cut to 1
½ H x 5”W (for the band)
I cut the red butterfly manually using the Sizzix Big Shot
machine and Ellentina die. For the pink
butterfly, I cut it out on the Cricut using the Design Space file. If you wish to put another butterfly on the
envelope, cut two of them instead of one.
Next I prepared the strip of white paper for the “band” that
will go under the butterfly. I embossed
this piece in the Darice folder in my Sizzix Big Shot machine. However, this does not mean you cannot
substitute something you already have on hand, such as a wide ribbon, burlap or
pre-embossed paper. Use your
imagination!
Before the card can be assembled the butterfly and punched
hearts have to be glued together. I cut
1” wide strips from the colored cardstock so I could easily punch out hearts
one after the other. I punched out 40
and still had some left over after applying to the butterfly die cut.
In order to give the hearts some dimension I used a bone folder
to press each one in the center so they would look uniform. I used my paper trimmer since it has a
convenient channel to press each heart down into. It is a little time consuming, but so worth
the result. If you don’t have a bone
folder, the back of a butter knife will do the trick.
Next I took the butterfly die cut and placed it on top of
some blue painter’s tape to hold it in place while I brushed the adhesive
on. I highly recommend using Ranger
multi-matte medium as the adhesive as it dries matte and is not (or barely)
visible if any is left exposed after attaching the little hearts. I found I got the best results by only
applying adhesive to one half of the butterfly at a time because the adhesive
seems to dry pretty fast.
So below is how both the pink and red butterfly turned
out. The difference in overall shape
will depend on what you use to cut the butterfly but in the end probably
anything you use will be just as cute!!
As you can see I put them as close together as possible facing different
directions and tried not to allow the hearts to go over the edge of the
butterfly. Now it’s time to put all the
pieces together - the BEST part!!
Here are all the separate pieces just before putting them
together using double-sided tape.
The order of final assembly is
- Card base (already folded)
- Contrasting paper layer (pink
& white striped as shown above)
- White panel with sentiment
- White embossed band (or whatever
you choose to place there)
- The butterfly (I used pop dots,
but could be directly glued on)
- Since I had leftover hearts, I
randomly glued them on with more multi-matte adhesive.
Voila! The finished
card.
Now that you’ve made it this far, here is the Design Space
file link I promised.
The above link will only be helpful if you already own a
Cricut Explore or Explore Air machine with an active monthly Cricut Access
subscription.
Hope you find this inspirational to your crafty
endeavors. Please post a comment and
share if you did. There are links below
to most of the materials and tools I used for this project.
Happy Crafting,
Teresa
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