Ode to LoveDay

Hope all of you had the kind of LoveDay you wanted to have. The Hubs and I had a wonderful evening. We decided to live a little and get the Valentine Dinner for Two at our favorite Mexican restaurant we always go to, and it turned out to be completely delicious.
We snapped a shot of Happy Us:

We're now settled in for the night, watching Home Fries on Encore MPlex (cable). Anything Drew Barrymore is good in my book. :-)

Hubs gave me a very nice store-bought card, and I made him one. I thought I would share how I made it, because it was a good excuse to use one of my favorite techniques to use up old rub-ons. How many of you have sets of rub-ons that lack any more e's or h's or o' or a' -- just the letters you always need that keep you from using the dang rub-ons? They say to mix and match, but every time I am looking to use them, mix and match doesn't fit the look of my card. And besides, my rub-ons are getting old. At the rate I use them, even when all the letters I need are available, it'll take me 10 more years to use 'em up.

Which brings me to my technique: apply them onto a card base, random or just as they are on the sheet, to make a background. Then brayer over them with some distress ink. Let dry a while, then lay down a paper towel and brayer over that to get the ink off the rub-ons. Let dry some more and then you can lightly rub the surface with the towel to get the remaining ink off. I call it Brayered Rub-ons.

What I did next was to color the exposed edge of my white cardstock red, using my sponge dauber and distress ink.

I slapped my background onto the cardbase, then added ribbon, printed transparency hearts and some paper to the back.

Finally, I had some ancient Creative Imaginations cardstock word stickers in purple, red and white, so I chose a few to complete the front of my card. I chose a purple, red and black color scheme to keep it on the masculine side. Some yellow and white got in there too, but that's okay.

Hubs liked it a lot, especially the background. He specifically asked how I did it, and keep feeling it. It really does feel neat. I think it is a great background for a guy, because they don't question all the letters as a pattern. As long as you cover the entire surface with them. I used two different sets that were the same shade of red, surprisingly. But the important thing to me is, I no longer have to look at those rub-ons any more, wondering what I'm gonna do with them. winkwink :-))))