I challenged myself earlier this week to (1) get my Valentine and early February birthday cards done and (2) to use the new Bear Hugs stamp set and Bear Hugs Framelits Dies for all of them. I wanted to see just how far I could go with the bears and accessories.
Let’s start with the first card, my son-in-law’s Valentines Day birthday card. I did not want his card to say “valentine” at all since I’m sure he’s gotten that all his life.
Dennis is a fisherman and when I saw the fish in this set I knew they would be in all the ‘guy cards’ for 2016 at least.
Moving on, I wanted to create Bear Hugs cards for my grandchildren. This is 9 year old Nora’s card. She’s the only girl in the California grandkidlets.
I started out with just the Elegant Eggplant bear but had an ‘aha moment’ that the card was from both Opa and me. So I added a Perfect Plum Oma bear. She carried flowers and Opa Bear sported a sassy Pear Pizzazz derby hat.
Then came the two seven year old boys, cousins who are into legos and star wars. Since they live 45 miles apart, they got the ‘same card’. I always get great hugs from both boys so this was going to be a huggy card for sure.
I used the same background technique that I used in early January on a sympathy card: spritzing the Watercolor Wash background stamp after inking it up with two stamp pads, Pear Pizzazz and Soft Sky.
I stamped two bears, colored them in using an Aqua Painter and Cajun Craze and Delightful Dijon ink pads, hands only on second bear, glued them together back to back using Multipurpose Liquid Glue so I could move the pieces around a bit to get them perfectly lined up. When put together you can gently curve the arms to hold the stamped heart. Put some Fast Fuse on the inside parts of the arms and attach the heart to each hand/arm.
Finally, here is 11 year old Austin’s card. Remember seeing all the evergreen trees behind the birtch-like trees from the Woodland Textured Impressions Embossing Folder* around Christmas time? Well, I decided to hide the bear behind a tree**. Add a funky hat and some hearts falling out of the trees and you have a Valentine card suitable for that 11 year old boy.
* Do you remember when I said about a month ago that the Woodland Textured Impressions Embossing Folder, while not available for purchase right now, will be back in the 2016-2017 Annual Catalog?! You can get yours then if you didn’t get it when the 2015 Holiday Catalog was still live.
** How did I get the bear behind the tree? I inked him up with Chocolate Chip ink and stamped him on the left-ish inside side of the Woodland Embossing Folder on the side that has Sizzix written on it. Insert your card stock and run it through the Big Shot.
Check out this post from late January where I have a link to Stampin’ Up!’s Bear Hug vido.
Did you enjoy my four versions of the Bear Hugs stamp set? If you’ve made a card with this set or have any comments about today’s card, please leave a comment below or send a photo of your card to Blythe@StampingWithBlythe.com and I’ll post it along with your name. Come on–be published right here on my blog. 🙂
