A Late Valentines for Mommy w/Lori Gentile

Yes, it's true, Valentines has come and gone, but we've still to pass along some love to you this week and this time around, it's from Lori Gentile! She's instilled a few heart-filled techniques that would easily apply to any your current ongoing projects..or maybe just a card that you've been thinking about mailing to a faraway friend - whatever the use, hearts are always in order no matter what time of year it is! What's not to love about'em?

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Hi Crate Paper blog readers. Lori Gentile with you, today, to share quick tutorial. One of the best things about Crate Paper products is their versatility. It’s February and love is definitely all around us.

My oldest son was able to bring home some paper hearts from school and he proceeded to convince my youngest son to make Valentine’s for me. They went into my craft room and shut the door. Dylan poked his head out and asked me not to come in. You can imagine what I was thinking, but I took a leap of faith and decided to trust him. When they emerged they had these adorable Valentine’s cards for me.

The Essentials: Neighborhood patterned paper {Chores, Picnic & Visit} & embellishments {ribbon, chipboard accents, layered chipboard, accent cuts, alpha stickers & border stickers}, Toy Box alpha labels & 6 x 6 patterned paper {Teal Diamonds}

To make these little paper hearts, you can use a punch, or if you are like me and shamefully without a heart punch, you can fold over the picnic paper and cut out half heart shapes.

Once you have done that, you can unfold them and outline them with a pen. They look really fun with a bend in the center.

I’m really excited about Crate Papers new ribbon addition to each collection. There is so much goodness that can be created from a little piece of ribbon. In this case, I shaped the white ribbon into two little hearts. They are fun, quick and add a bunch of dimension.

Before working with ribbon you want to make sure you have a fantastic ribbon glue; one that dries quickly and clearly, and one that one that won’t show through the ribbon. In others words, unless you are going for that look, you don’t want to see a big wet mark left on the ribbon (from the front) after the glue dries.

Crease the ribbon together and place a drop of glue in the center. Keep pressure on the crease for a few seconds until the glue dries.

Bring the ribbon around each side of the crease to shape the heart, then glue together the bottom two tails and cut. It’s super quick and really cute!

I saw the little bird with the big quote bubble over his head and fell in love with him. I didn’t want use that much green on my page, so I quickly cut out the bird and the quote bubble and used them as my journaling accent. I clustered some hearts around him to show him off a bit. I think he’s the cutest thing!

Even though Crate Papers Neighborhood collection is a Spring collection, it’s so versatile and easy to use in any theme you can dream up. Just start with the colors you want to use for your own theme (in my case, pinks and teals with accents of green), create your themed shapes with punches or your creativity and go from there.

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I hope you have enjoyed today’s tutorial and I’ll see you, again, next month.