How To: Valentines

I've been excited to post about this since I started making my Valentines last week, but I didn't want to spoil the surprise.  I saw a lot of great valentines floating around the web this year, but I was particularly struck by this one.  The simple red heart and loopy handwriting inspired my design.  I failed a semester of German in college, but still love the language I am so poor at speaking.  "Du bist geleibt" is one of my favorite phrases and means "you are loved".  I used the English inside the card for all my non-German speaking friends.  Keep reading after the jump to see how I made them.

I've been playing around a bit lately with linocuts and stamping.  I made a bunch of linocuts a few years back and really enjoyed the look of it, but carving out the hard linoleum blocks was hard on my wrists (accommodating for my repetitive stress injuries is a daily part of life).  This year I started experimenting with some of the linoleum alternatives that are on the market.  For this project I used this one.  It's much softer that traditional linoleum which is great for my wrist, but it also can stretch and bend a bit when carving so it's not great for super detailed work.  I started, as always, by sketching out my design and transferring it onto my block before carving it out.  Be sure to flip your design if you are using text or it will turn out backwards.

I bought a bulk pack of plain white cards and envelopes from my local craft store.  I used a brayer to get a thin, even coat of ink.  Too much ink can cause the block to slip as you are printing and can gunk up around the edges.  I inked up my block and went for it.  Because the block was so soft I found I had to trim off the corners below the heart the keep them from showing up on my print.  I used them to carve hearts for the inside of the card.

I let the fronts of the cards dry completely before flipping over to print the inside.  Be sure to use firm even pressure, or this will happen.

I used the corner pieces I cut off my big heart block to make this cluster of little hearts.  The material is carvable on both sides, so I just flipped it over and carved out my design.  I find that for little stamps, painting the ink on with a brush makes for a more even coat than the brayer.  Once the inside was dry I was ready to add a personal note and stick them in the mail.  I made 25 cards for friends in far away places in a pretty short amount of time.  I'm already thinking up designs for birthdays and all the wedding I get to attend this summer.