WOOD you still be mine? A cute beaver Valentine!

I had a lot of fun making this Valentine's Day card for my hubby! Though I was having a very difficult time with my bipolar at the time I was working on this card, I put my mind to it and I got this done!
It's sometimes difficult making "cute" cards for my hubby that don't turn out 'girly'. I know a lot of my card making friends have this same problem. I actually had to turn to my card making friends in one of my Facebook groups to get help with the colors for this card. Thankfully, several of the ladies threw out the same color suggestions of red and yellow or red and gold.
That helped me greatly in picking the papers for this card. I originally had teal, rose pink and brown picked out. ICK! I'm so glad my friends were able to help me out in the color selection.

Anyhow, I got to use this CUTE beaver stamp that I have to make hubby's card, and I added a lot of other cute elements to make the card complete, including getting to use my new sewing machine that I got for Christmas, to sew some borders on the card (inside and out).

Here's a sneak peek at the card, click below to see the rest of the pics.

A LOT of work went into this card!!

 For these cute little X's and O's, I found a nice stick outside and I carved it down to the middle of the stick as far as I could go and then I stripped some of the pieces off. I got them as thin as I could. For the X's, I just used some hot glue and crossed the sticks and glued them. For the O's I tied the sticks in knots around my pinky finger. They turned out the perfect size! I really like how the first O looks kinda like a heart. I didn't intentionally do that, and it turned out cute. :)

I stamped the beaver (Inkadinkado) on white cardstock in black memento ink and then colored him with my Prismacolored Pencils and blended with Gamsol. I put glossy accents over his eyes, his tail and his teeth (to give them a glossy wet look to go with the traditional dirty beaver teeth). For the middle of the log I used a small wood veneer heart that I got at my LSS. I got 5 of them for $1.00 and the word "love" carved into the heart just makes this complete!

There are LOTS of layers to this card! After fussy cutting the beaver out I layered him onto a circle of white cardstock that I colored red by using the TH ink applicator. I then layered the beaver and red circle onto a circle of corrugated cardboard. This corrugated cardboard was pulled out from one of my "hoarding this because I know someday I'll use it on a card or project" drawer. The cardboard was actually large squares that I saved from our box of dishes that we got for christmas 2 years ago. LOL. I KNEW that stuff wuold come in handy sometime!
Under the corrugated cardboard, I put another scalloped circle of decorative cardstock. Under allllllll those circles I used a rectangle of dry embossed Kraft cardstock. For the woodgrain look I inked up my Darice Woodgrain embossing folder with Stampin' Up! Chocolate Chip ink and then carefully placed the cardstock in the folder and ran it through my bigshot. It came out SO cool!

If you're looking at this picture, you can see the stitching I did on the 2 different layers. This Christmas I got a new sewing machine from my Ma. The machine was actually defective so we sent it back and she got me a different machine, a little more expensive and it had a LOT more stitches to it. She got me the Brother HC1850 computerized quilting machine. I am in LOVE with my machine. I've done SO much on it already. :)
But for this card, I did these 2 stitchings for the front and then on the inside I did the bottom border stitching as well.

 If you look closely, you can see that both layers of the card that has stitches, the stitches are actually going in the same direction! I honestly didn't even pay attention to this when I was putting the layers of the card together, and I'm REALLY glad that it turned out they were in the same direction, because I was a total space case when it came to remembering to make sure they were in the same direction. LOL.

For this top right corner of the card, I used some little tear away heart flags from My Minds Eye. On top of the hearts I used some My Minds Eye letter stickers from the Lime Twist line to spell out "LUV U"... I used a little bit of Tombow liquid glue on the back of the letter stickers just to be sure that they stuck on there for good.
*Not shown here, because I did it after I took pics of the card, I covered the little letter circle stickers with the glossy accents to make them look like epoxy stickers. It does look REALLY cool and it makes the letters pop.

Here is the inside of the card. I was pretty conflicted on what to do inside the card. I fussed with SEVERAL different designs inside before I finally settled on this design.

 This is the heart stitching I did with my sewing machine. For all my stitching I used Americana Quilting Thread, it's 100% glaced thread. It gives the thread a very pretty shine (not really translated here in the picture though). The thread is very very soft to the touch and shiny to the eye. So pretty!

The sentiment wasn't originally meant to go inside the card, but I couldn't figure out how to put it on the front of the card without making the card too cluttered. So, inside it went!
Hubby and I have been together for 19 years, married 9 years this March. I thought a cute play on words would work well with this card. So, "WOOD You Still Be Mine?" was perfect for this card! I found the font online for free and used Microsoft word and my mom's printer. Printed it onto white cardstock and then cut it out with the small circles Nestabilities. I layered that onto a slightly bigger scalloped circle.
I had fun using the regular and scalloped Nestabilities to create a few different layers on this "ribbon", along with using another piece of Kraft cardstock and the woodgrain embossing folder. I think it came out SO cute! I just added a small piece of folded red ribbon and attached it with a Zot on the back and then used some glossy accents to glue this ribbon badge to the card. I wanted to make sure it wouldn't come off.

The little flag under the sentiment pulls out with another hidden message. I used the "LOVE YOU" stamp from the Stampin' Up! Itty Bitty Banners, and then used the coordinating dies to cut it out. Yes, I know, I could have just used scissors, but any change I get to use my bigshot, I go for it! hehe. CRAFTAHOLIC here!!!!!

I am SO very happy with how this card came out. I won't lie, I literally worked on this card for nearly THREE days, yes, 3 days!!! When I get a vision, and it isn't working out how I want, I continue to work on things until I get it to look as close as I originally imaged. Sometimes, that's difficult. When working on this card, I was in a manic phase of my bipolar and I was having some pretty rough days. But, I worked through it all and I accomplished my goal, even ON TIME.

My hubby LOVED this card, and he even got a kick out of my message inside... it was along the lines of Wynona's Big Brown Beaver has NOTHIN' on this cute little beaver! ;) haha.
I gave hubby his card with the Legend of Zelda bookmark I made him (see previous blog post).

Today, the day I'm posting this card here on my blog is February 17, 2015, and I've still not finished hubby's sewing project. But, I am really hoping to have it finished for him by our wedding anniversary, March 18th. whewww I still have a TON of work to do on it, though!

Well, thanks for stopping by to check out my card, I hope you like it!

Keep on Craftin'
~Melisa Marie