Here are tips to help you create with "Where Your Heart Is". Use the greetings and image together or separately any time you want to lift some one up by letting them know how much care, whether that's to thank someone for their hard work, time, love and/or commitment or to let someone know you are praying for them.
Sentiments
The phrases below show you how to put the different words together, there may be more sentiments that I show here. Enjoy stacking your sentiments in different ways to fit your different shaped and sized die cuts or tags, or use a stamp positioner to stamp them out in a long line.
God bless You
God bless our family/country/school/community
God bless you/your family for all you do!
God bless you/your family for the example you set!
God bless you/your family for you Service/Sacrifice
Thanks for your sacrifice/service/prayers
Thanks for all you do!
Thanks for the example you set!
Thanks for loving/serving our/your family/community/church/country/school
Your prayers/letters/pictures mean everything to me!
Praying for us
Praying for your/our
safe return/school/country/family/community/school/church
In our time apart,
I do this for you/us/our family etc
I am working for us/you/our family/church etc
Loving/Serving is Serving/Loving your/our family/community/church/country
Your sacrifice is everything to me!
Our family is everything to me!
Omit the"r' in "Your" by inking the remainder of the long sentiment to say "You mean everything to me!"Or use the separate "You" provided and then just ink up "mean everything to me!"
Get creative with these sentiments and different people you can send them to. (Ideas for people and occasions are listed at the bottom) There are probably people in your life you see often, but maybe don't know their birthday or perhaps even their name, these little hands can still reach out and touch someone in way that says, "I notice and appreciate you!" :)
The Image
Color in the heart to make it stand out or paper piece it with patterned papers.
Paper piece the background with patterned papers for sponge or fill in with the color medium of you choice.
Sponging will add a beautiful "glow" to this image. Mask the edges with sticky notes or don't worry about covering them up just trim exactly after sponging! :)
Create sleeves on each side of the wrists to make sleeves. Make them larger by male hands and narrower for female hands.
The classic style of the fonts will go on any card, beautifully with your patterned paper or other images, even without using the hands image.
Pop up the hands for more dimension.
The rectangle was designed to fit the Rectangle Nestabilities. Enjoy cutting after stamping your image and use larger dies when you want a lager border around the edge. These die cuts will them mat beautifully onto the other Rectangle dies: Deckled Edge, Scalloped, Big Scalloped etc.
You can also easily crop the hands into a square by trimming off the rectangle border with a paper trimmer or using a square die or punch.
Stamps the hands in brown, black or gray before coloring, in whichever best suits your projects color scheme or ink up the hands in a tan or peach before coloring for a softer look.
Leave the hands uncolored and just color in the heart to really make the heart pop.
Stamp a heart shaped image into the heart space. try adding little heart shaped embellishments like buttons, rhinestones or stickers to emphasize the message of love.
Accent the image by adding heart shaped punches or die cuts to your project, layering it over the hearts, surrounding it or adding just one of two at the corners.
For a quick single layer cards, stamp image onto Pure Luxury base weight cardstock, and emboss a shaped around it.
Stamp the single words like "Us" "You" or "i love you" phrase inside the heart. You can also cut out the hands and heart space in between them, then pop them up with heart shape window centered over the stamped word.
The cut out hands are also sweet over a photo, centering the open heart over someone's face or two faces.
There is room above and below the pair of hands to stamp your phrases, for example praying for" along the top left with "your family" along the bottom right corner.
You can also stamp the words above below, or going around the corner around the outside of the rectangle.
The hands can fit virtually any shaped die if you ink up the hands only, omitting the rectangle outline, then stamp onto cardstock. Now place your shaped die around, finding a die that fits to the edge of the wrist and die cut. Color as desired.
Create little personal effects to add bling and customize the hands by creating bracelets form adhesive pearls, rhinestones, colored string, wire etc.
Make a beautiful accent for your scrapbook pages.
Color the hands to match your own. Or for a wedding or anniversary, color them to match the recipients, very personal to make one hand in the skin tone of each so that the card shows their two hands coming together to form *love*!
Watermark it onto your card backgrounds or inside your cards to send a sweet and subtle (almost subliminal , hee!) message.
Create small note cards with the image and tuck into your purse to have on hand when you come across someone who might need a little boost, like little random acts of kindness. How fun to pass one off to the sweet librarian or cashier you've been going to for years to let them know "I love you positive attitude each day! Keep up the good work!"
Tuck little cards with this image into you kids lunch boxes, on DH's pillow, inside his briefcase, car etc. You can feel like it's Valentine's Day any day!
Make fun treatholders for Valentines or little any time gifts.
Examples of occasions for this image:
Valentines
Get Well
Thank You
Miss You
Thinking of You
Sympathy
Anniversaries
Birthdays
Encouragement
Congratulations
Friendship
Fun wedding
Secretary's Day
Examples of people to give these to, beyond friends and family:
Childcare workers
volunteers at school, church
teachers/teachers aids
missionaries
hospital patients
clergy
doctors, nurses
boss/coworkers
soldiers/ Operation Write Home (to send home to their families, or for Anyhero mail)
recipients of card drives (charity organization can distribute to people in need)
the elderly
As always this is just to get your creative juices flowing. Sorry for the delay in posting these basics! I will continue to give you tips for the set as well as new samples illustrating the ideas above along with more layouts and design ideas.
Have a great Sunday! (we're off from school tomorrow, how about you?)
Coming up, a sketch challenge (I love how this card turned out!) :)
I used the sketch to make a special Valentine for my son's kindergarten teacher. I found this cute sheet of vintage valentine paper from The Paper Studio at Hobby Lobby, always get so nostalgic for making homemade Valentines and decorating bags to put them in back in elementary school this time of year! Glad my kids give me LOTS of excuses to keep making crafts like those!
I trimmed it so I'd have this little blond boy (who looks like William!) saying, "I've the nicest teacher in the world." (The girl above that looks like his blonde teacher, too, how about that?!) It's REALLY helpful to check out the details in your patterned paper before you start cutting to find the best parts for your particular design. The Black Onyx layer is Cuttlebugged with Numbers Collage and swiped a Cream White ink pad over the embossing to look like black board, isn't than fun? Sponge the Beaded Circle lightly with Antique Linen ink and add your stamped hands from "Where Your Heart is". I colored the hands with E51 and E02 (this color is a little pinker/peachier than the ones I've used on other posts, I wanted to give the little boys hands a slightly ruddier look) I pieced the heart middle with Red Hot to match the little "I love you" sentiment and cardbase, wanted a more opaque look as if you were cutting out little red hearts from construction paper. Pure Luxury White layer under the black mat is sponged with the Antqiue Linen as well to match the DP. I can't wait to make more Valentines with this set! I got some trendy heart paper too so I'll be making some with designs with that as well!
