An Upcycled Valentine

I have been crazy busy with work and family and have found absolutely no time to craft. I have however been going through some old projects that I had done and photographed. A lot of them can be found in all my books, The Ultimate Guide to Upcycling, Crafty Cans and Perplexing Plastic and The Christmas Guide to Upcycling and lots can also be found on my blog.

For those of you who are reading my blog for the first time, I am a mixed media artist with degrees in Mathematics. Don’t ask how that happened, it just did 🙂 I love to use materials that would otherwise be thrown away in my art. Things like soda cans, plastic packaging, plastic bags, fabric and paper scraps, old magazines and books, all find their way into my art and craft projects. My books and this blog are both logs of my adventures.

My latest project was an upcycled smash journal. I love what EK Success has developed and I bought and worked on a pretty pink smash journal for my 2011 scrapbook but I wanted to try my hand at an upcycled version.

The current post though is about a project I did a while back and that can be found, along with many others, in my book, Crafty Cans and Perplexing Plastic.

I made these small Valentine, Birthday and Baby cards using some paper scraps and soda cans. Here is how you can make your own.

Gift Cards

Materials:

• Small plain cards with envelopes
• Pieces of die-cut and embossed plastic and aluminum
• Double sided tape
• Decorative paper
• Ribbons
• Brads
• Embellishments

I love making smaller cards to give with gifts and the smaller cuttlebug embossing folders give the perfect sized embossed die-cuts for doing exactly that! Use punches or smaller dies to cut out the small embossed pieces. The way to emboss the soda can aluminum is as foolows. First you have to cut the can, taking off the top and the bottom. This is a little tricky so I would advise that you wear plastic gloves while doing this. Once the top and bottom have been removed you should have the middle aluminum piece. Flatten it out into a sheet. Use this sheet as your metal to be embossed. Either die-cut little pieces and embellishments from the aluminum and then emboss it using the cuttlebug embossing folders or emboss it first and then die-cut it.

For these cards I used the Cuttlebug stamp die to cut out the embossed stamp designs.

Add some colored paper and card, color in your embossed pieces using sharpies to match the paper and then add some ribbons and embellishments to create one of a kind designer cards.

I always make these in large batches since they go fast. These small cards also make great little card sets to give away to friends and family or to sell at holiday or other craft bazaars!