I have no progress to report for WiP Wednesday in terms of quilting progress, so I thought I’d run through the Valentine’s cards I made. They glitter like Vegas on a clear night. If Vegas ever has clear nights. Does it? I’m not sure.

Are these cards sophisticated? No way. Fast and easy and fun? Absolutely. Weirdly enough, some of those also apply to the pseudo-artist.

Elegant, jaw-dropping handmade cards elude me. I love seeing what other people make, and how creative they are when it comes to cards. Get me anywhere near the same supplies, though, and my hands turn stupid. Seriously. It’s like they suddenly have a brother Darrel, and another brother Darrel. They turn into toddler hands. I keep trying, though, and I mostly read the product catalogs for the articles.

Cleaning through my office, I ran into several materials that suddenly clicked as having card potential. I thought I’d share this particular silliness with the world. (There are many sillinesses that I keep to myself. Be grateful for that.)

Materials:

• Premade blank cards and envelopes, or you can make your own. I can’t (stupid hands, remember?), but you, my talented reader, probably can.
• SNAIL adhesive. Any kind or brand will do. Or double-sided tape, or rubber cement, or paste, or hell, probably anything adequately sticky that will dry in a reasonable amount of time and isn’t organic. Don’t go there.
• Some kind of non-white paper
• Index cards
• Cheapie kids valentines of the type we’ve all given out as kids between the grades of 1 and 6. Unless you’re me, in which case you’ve done so much more recently than that.
• Postage stamps
• Addresses of people you worthy of your cards
• Optional: glitter glue, buttons, ribbon, whatever you’d like to use for embellishment

Right.

Now cut out a piece of the non-white paper to be a little smaller than the front of your premade card.

A little SNAIL trail, and…

slap those babies together.

SNAIL on index card (not acid-free, not archival, and not fussy).

Add to non-white paper.

Sticky-up that kid-sized valentine and center it on the index card as best you can. If it’s not perfect, well, that’s exactly in the spirit of the handmade Valentine card, isn’t it? So just go with it. Perfect is the enemy of getting things done. Better to send out imperfect cards than to send none at all. Besides which, most people don’t look at a card long enough to notice if something is crooked or not. I count on human imperception. Is that a word? It is now.

Now you can go crazy with embellishments, if you want. Remember using Elmer’s glue and adding glitter and getting it absolutely everywhere? Feel free to indulge, if you’d like. I mean, really, go crazy.

The most important part of this whole thing is this:
Address it and send it! NOW! If you don’t do it now, it won’t get done. Or is that just me? Is it? Oh god it is, isn’t it?

Pretty stamps are good, too.

Ok. I’m walking to the mailbox now. Enough stalling. I’m really going to the mailbox. Unless I get distracted.

Maybe just one cup of coffee first.

No, no, must go to the mailbox. Right.

Oh, look!

What was I doing? Why do I have these envelopes in my hand? Oh, the mailbox. Right.

Phew! Made it.

Now if you want a really beautiful card, I recommend seeing my friend Lael. She makes unbelievably gorgeous cards, and also has classes for people who are local to the Treasure Valley.

If you do this, please share it with me – I’d love you see what creative people get up to with this idea. Does that make me a creative voyeur? So be it.