A Washi Valentine

One of my daughters gave me a Washi tape dispenser filled with Washi tape for Christmas. I love it! Thank you so much, Shanna!

Washi tape is fun to use as an embellishment, but really useful for other crafting needs, too (see more on that below).

You can see all the different colors of Washi tape, and it spins, so it's easy to get just the right color when you need it. My daughter said she found this particular item at Costco. Love Costco! It's a good thing I didn't see it first, or I might have purchased it for myself. :)

The first time I ever used Washi tape was when Patti, from Cherich Each Precious Day, selected my name to receive her blog candy, which included Washi tape. Thank you, Patti!

While I've used it a few times as an accent on a card, I wanted to see if I could make it the focal point, too.

Here's what I came up with:

For this lavender and purple Valentine, I used my Gypsy and the George cartridge to cut a rounded corner rectangle with 4 heart cutouts. Each of the hearts was sized at 1.5". I also used my Cricut to cut the white mat.

Once I had everything cut out, I laid the lavender rectangle over the white rectangle and traced the heart cutouts. Then I used some purple Washi tape in two different sizes and laid pieces of it over the top of the heart tracings. In between the strips of Washi tape, I adhered some 1/4" double-sided tape. As I took the top backing off the tape, I added glitter over the top of each piece and burnished it in. Some of the strips are a dark purple and others are a lighter, more pinkish purple.

Once I had all my pieces of tape in place, I embossed the sentiment onto the lavendar heart panel using dark purple embossing powder.  Then I adhered the lavendar layer onto the white mat with some foam tape.

It looks so sparkly and pretty in real life. Wish I could have gotten a better picture of it, but I think you get the idea.



I kept the inside of the card plain so that I can write a personal note.

I mentioned that I like Washi tape for other uses besides embellishing cards. Here are a few of the other ways I use it:

• I use it all the time to hold dies in place when I send them through the Cuttlebug.
• If my Cricut mats are losing their stick (and I don't have time to re-stick them), I use Washi tape to hold the paper in place while it is being cut by the Cricut.
• You know all those instruction pages at the beginning of your cartridge manuals?  Well, I put a piece of Washi tape around all of them on each side so that I can easily and immediately flip to the first image page.                                                
• I actually tried covering a round Card Candi with a little piece of Washi tape....and it worked! I haven't used it yet--I'm just waiting for the right card idea to come along .
• When I need to cut a very small or thin scrap of paper into an even smaller piece, I use Washi tape to hold it onto the bed of the cutter. I have a small Fiskar paper cutter and a larger guillotine cutter and I've used it with both of them.
• Washi tape works great as a masking agent on a stamp or on paper. When using it on a stamp, I just cover up the part I don't want inked with a small piece of tape, then ink up the stamp. Before stamping, I simply remove the tape. 
• I have even added some Washi tape to some white cardstock and then cut out a cute little Washi tape button with one of my button dies. Some of the wider Washi tapes will allow you to cut bigger dies. Of course, you can always stack pieces of Washi tape (as I did for the hearts in the valentine above) onto cardstock and then cut an image out with a die.

Do you have a unique use for Washi tape? If so, I'd LOVE it if you'd share it with me. It's a great product and I'd really like to add to my list of ways to use it.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day!
Cheryl