I made 20 of these valentines for my son’s preschool classmates – there’s nothing like the deadline of a preschool party to motivate me – ha!
I’ve been wanting to use this Tiny Ninjas stamp set from Mama Elephant, ever since I first saw it in the Simon Says Stamp Masterpiece Box last July. No one volunteered to buy that Masterpiece Box for me, so I patiently waited for their release in November. I set alarms on my phone and computer to make sure I got it before it sold out, and I seriously made my purchase within the first few minutes of it being available. My package arrived a few days later…and then the holidays happened.
In the last 3 months of 2016 I made over 200 cards – 20 Thanksgiving cards, 100+ cards made for the Caring Hearts Card Drive, and 100+ holiday cards to send out to friends and family. So here we are in the following year, and all I managed to do with this set was to stamp the images onto paper, but hadn’t had the time to really make something with it until now. The need for preschool valentines prompted me to get this set out and start crafting!
I started off by lining up the largest of the Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies with a 3″ circle die from the Lifestyle Crafts Nesting Circles. I placed them cut side down on a piece of graph paper and used the grid lines to center the circle inside the upper half of the rectangle. I then took three strips of packing tape and attached the two dies together on the top and sides of the circle. I carefully pressed down on the tape where it touched the metal, making sure not to adhere everything to the graph paper below. After I flipped the attached dies over, I used my EK Success powder tool to remove as much stickiness from the exposed tape.
I die cut some red Core’dinations cardstock from my stash with this contraption and popped out the circles. I used my MISTI to stamp the sentiment from the Tiny Ninjas set in the same place on each panel with Memento tuxedo black dye ink.
Using one of the panels to line up the connected circles from the Avery Elle Burst dies in the center of the circle, I taped the attached circle dies onto a piece of 80 lb A2 sized Neenah solar white cardstock. I used a silicone embossing pad and adjusted my sandwich so that I could emboss the concentric circles onto the white piece of cardstock. Sandwich: Extended Multipurpose Platform open to tab 1, cutting plate, silicone embossing pad, cardstock, circle dies facing down, cutting pad. I was going for a subtle bullseye look with the embossed circles, but also knew that I needed a little more support for the red die-cut panels, as the Core’dinations cardstock was thinner than what I usually use for flat cards. Using white for the back also provided a good space for me to write my son’s name & for him to add a drawing. I took the small solid heart from Simon Says Stamp’s Hello Beautiful set and stamped it into the center of the bullseye using classic cherry Ranger dye ink. I adhered the red and white panels together using my ATG.
I chose the ninja image that looked like he was throwing and moving to the left, and stamped the image 20+ times onto 80 lb Neenah cardstock. I colored the ninja belts with my Spectrum Noir TB5 alcohol marker and went over the eyes with a Sakura Glaze black pen. While the eyes were drying, I stamped the open throwing star repeatedly along the bottom of that same piece of 80 lb Neenah cardstock and colored them in with Spectrum Noir IG4. After checking the eyes to make sure they were dry and wouldn’t smear, I cut out all the images. For the stars, I cut along the outside lines, whereas I left some white space around the ninjas. I used the brush tip of a Memento tuxedo black marker to color the cut edges of the stars so there was no visible white of the paper core. I placed each throwing star onto strips of micro Glue Dots, and then attached them to the cards so that they looked like they were stuck in the hearts.
Finally, I popped up all the ninjas with foam squares and adhered them at an angle so it looked like they were flying through the air and throwing the stars at the hearts. I thought this design worked well with the stamped sentiment & my son was super excited to give out these with bendable ninja toys!
