Hello everyone! With the beginning of February only a couple days away, I’m in full Valentine’s card making mode and I have a fun one to share with you today. I have created a custom XOXO background in a classic red/pink color palette to compliment the greeting and sweet little scene.

I have always loved playing around with typography and using letters as a design element on my cards. For this card, I went with a grid style placement of the letters. I have used the Charlie Large Alpha dies for the X’s and O’s. Theses dies cut the outline and the solid letter so I decided to use both to fill the entire A2 size panel of pink gingham paper. The hardest part is getting the letters lined up and evenly spaced. I used a t-ruler to help with that.

Once I had the background complete, I created a little vignette with the cute critters and florals from the Big Hugs Woodland stamp set. I used one of the dies from the Nesting Ovals set to die cut a piece of vellum to build the scene onto. For area at the bottom of the oval, I used Mowed Lawn Distress Oxide and a blending brush to add the green color. I left the top two thirds of the oval as is so the XO background would show through.

I added the hugs and kisses sentiment which is also from the Big Hugs Woodland set. To attatch the oval scene to the background, I carefully applied adhesive behind the stamped elements. With no adhesive showing through, the card had a nice clean look and the scene fits seamlessly with the background.
Below is a list of the Copic colors I used for this card:
- deer – E41, E42, E43, R00, R20
- bunny – W1, W3, R00, R20
- flowers – R32, R35
- grass & leaves – YG11, YG17