ATC’s for Valentine’s Day

Hello! Tami Sanders here with an idea for Valentine’s Day for you and your kiddos.

My son is taking art this year and is really enjoying it. He likes to draw and play with all my art supplies – including my TCW stencils!

I am not a fan of the current kid’s Valentine exchange cards. I especially DON’T like those that are just a bit of cardboard attached to some candy; nothing to really save. I remember getting a book of all sorts of bits and pieces that you could cut out to make your own Valentines; there were even envelopes to put together to place your valentines in for class room exchanges.

So this year, I suggested instead of buying cards, we make our own! I thought “love and friendship” themed ATC cards would work well.

I decided we would keep it simple and make them “in mass”, but still wanted each one to be unique. I thought the best way to do that would be to stencil whole sheets of cardstock then cut the sheets apart into individual ATC’s.

We started with Heavyweight 110 lb. white cardstock from Core’dinations. Core’dinations heavyweight cardstock is great to use with spray inks – which is what we had planned – they stand up without wilting or warping!

My son and I selected a group of colors from my stash of spray inks – a mix of ColorBox Archival Dye Ink Spritzers and Stephanie Barnard Dye Ink Sprays, both from Clearsnap.

For this project we selected a few lighter shades to use as “base” colors and a few darker ones for “accent” colors.

THEN – the fun part, choosing a WHOLE BUNCH of TCW stencils! You’ll want a mix of stencils with small background designs as well as a few with more defined larger designs. And you can use 6″, 12″ or a mix of both.

Here are the stencils that we used on these ATC’s: TCW2030 Burlap Bits, TCW2038 Tiny Ring Bits, TCW253s Mini Fish Scales, TCW457s Gothic Romance, TCW390s Mini Baubles, TCW347s Mini Kaleidoscope, TCW379s Mini Peacock Pattern, TCW495s Sea Bubbles, TCW408s Mini Shattered Circles, TCW484s Netting, TCW43` Ripples, TCW366 Scallop Flowers, TCW248 Cubist, TCW495 Sea Bubbles, TCW385 Moroccan Tiles and TCW500 Nautilus.

You can get TEN ATC’s from one 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of cardstock, so these Valentine’s are very cost friendly too. And remember, when you use spray ink on stencils, you can turn the stencil over and rub the excess ink off on your paper so you can get more bang for your buck!

Here’s what some of the finished ATC’s looked like…

valentine atcs - wm

I’ve put together a Snapguide that show’s how you can make these Valentine ATC’s yourself; you can view it here: VALENTINE ATC CARDS

thanks for visiting the TCW Blog!

 

 

Tami Sanders

www.tamisanders.com

The Crafter’s Workshop Design Team Member

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