Hello there! It’s Friday, and I can’t even say how happy I am that it is! I’m ready for a weekend of crafting and relaxing, and maybe another one of those Modern French 75’s from Wednesday! Today’s gift is a fun handmade present that you can make with a lot of things you probably have on hand; it’s a favorite little love craft!

I don’t know about you, but I have a kagillion decks of cards laying around, and there’s no way I am ever going to need all of them. A while back I thought that it could be fun to make a flip book out of it, but make it more meaningful and crafty, it turned into a hand-made valentine. For inspiration, I started out by writing things that made me happy about my guy and went from there. The list came together pretty quickly and as I wrote each item, I remembered a funny story, or time in our life and wrote notes about what each card could look like. 53 cards later (I even used the Joker), I had a fun Valentines Day gift to share with him.

First up, gather your materials. Pro tip: you’re probably just going to want to dump out all of your crafts on a table for this one. You’ll need:

1 deck of playing cards, new or old, doesn’t matter
brown or gold stamp pads (totally optional, I liked a weathered look to my cards)
Stamps
Colored pens
Craft paper
Scissors-straight edge and decorative
GLITTER!
Pictures of the two of you
Vintage ads
Glue dots or tape roller
A Zutter Bind It All and wires OR a hole punch and key rings
Stickers
**Basically, grab what makes you happy and is fun to play with**

The method:
Start by stamping your cards lightly with the ink pad, all over the back side of the card, and let dry. If you find you have too much ink, or if you don’t like how it looks, you can take a dry paper towel and wipe off.
Next, decide where you want your holes to be. I made the mistake of decorating a few without figuring out where the rings would go, and messed up a card. Doing this in advance lets you know how much room you have to play with. If you’re using a hole punch, go about 1/3 to 1/2 inch down the card, punching one on each top corner, and top middle. If you’re using the zutter, you can use the standard press lines (about 1/3 inch) along the top of the card.

Now it’s time for fun! Remember that list of reasons you wrote up about how much you adore your special person? Go grab that and start decorating your cards; one for each reason. Here’s a couple of the pages I made, in case you want ideas! Last steps are below the pictures!

Once you’ve decorated all of your cards, you’re ready to assemble in any order you want, and then secure, using your clipping key rings, or using your bind it all to secure your binding wire. That’s it!

What’s your top reason you’re in love and how you do you show it?

Raina