Valentine's Day card share

Hello again crafty friends,

Today I thought I'd share the cards I made for Valentine's Day. I think they turned out super cute.
I had recently purchased some Bristol smooth watercolor paper and wanted to try my hand at some faux-water coloring. I've owned a set of Martha Stewart markers for years and rarely use them. They're water based so I wanted to try to use them the way I've seen folks use those Zig waterbrush markers (which I don't have) on YouTube. I couldn't believe how well it worked. I would put down a bit of color in a small area on the image and then use a waterbrush to spread the color out. It worked like a charm and created a soft watercolor effect which I think worked well with the images on this card. Here they are:

For the cards I combined several stamp sets. For the first card, I used the "Charmed" stamp set by Mama Elephant. The sentiment on the banner came from the "In My Heart" stamp set by Mama Elephant. 

For the second card I stamped the larger birds and feathers using a stamp set from Lawn Fawn that is no longer available because it was a limited edition. 

But the smaller bird is from the Lawn Fawn "Chit Chat" stamp set. The branch is from the "Charmed" stamp set by Mama Elephant and the heart frame is from a Spellbinder set called "Heart Circle". It's not actually a frame so I used a SSS stitched circle die that fit and cut out the center and, voila, it's a cute frame. The sentiment is from an old Cloud9 Design stamp set that I don't even know the name of.

For both cards, I used Tim Holtz distress inks to create a soft colored background. Then I used the SSS Stitched rectangle die to cut out the panels and adhered the images and elements to them. For the purple mat I used the stitched scalloped rectangle die from the MFT dienamics blueprints 27.

I kept the embellishments pretty simple with just a touch of sparkle on the hearts and a clear glaze pen for the beaks and tiny flowers on the wreath.

By the way, the limited edition Lawn Fawn set didn't have dies, but I got a Brother Scan N Cut for Christmas and it cut the images for me beautifully. I love the Scan N Cut!!!! I'm not great at fussy cutting and usually my hands start to hurt especially when I'm making a large number of the same cards so this machine has been a HUGE help!!! Also, now I no longer have to buy matching dies for stamp sets which frees up my very limited budget to purchase more stamps and stand-alone dies and such.

So, those are my Valentine's cards. Hope you enjoyed.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a blessed & crafty day.

Hugs,

Bettina :)