Why Hashtags Are Awesome

In this case, the hashtag I'm talking about is #aworldofhearts on Instagram. My friend Anna Chiang, the owner of The Ink Pad, saw it first and loved the way small business owners, artists and families are decorating their windows with hundreds of rainbow colored hearts as a greeting to their neighbors and the world outside. When I (Lauren) saw it, my first thought was to try to translate the idea into card form, so I could send the message to my friends who are further afield.

But then, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do a window, as well, so then I did that, too!

It turned out to be fairly easy to make the hearts (especially if you own nested heart dies and lots of colors of cardstock... which I do!) and only slightly harder to arrange them in a cool pattern. The really hard part turned out to be getting a great photo of the window I decorated. So you'll have to trust me when I tell you it's cooler looking in real life, ok?

But let's get back to the cards, because we're lucky enough to have a big "window" on the whole entire world, it's called the post office! So why not use it to spread a little joy? I used the smallest dies from the same set of nested ones, and scraps of plastic packaging to make myself a few sizes of heart stencils. Which I then used to cover two card fronts with Distress Oxide hearts. But... for that matter... the idea would work equally well with stickers, or hand-drawn hearts, or ones cut out of folded construction paper, like the valentines we made as children. In fact, this would be such a fun project to do with kids, because you could give them the structure of hearts + rainbow colors, then let them interpret it in their own way! 

My first card has the serpentine of hearts, rising from the bottom edge and floating off the top. It's on a dictionary page which has the definition of "heart" on it. (The same page also had heartless and hearse... but sequins and careful trimming helped me out there!) I used multiple shades of Distress Oxides and my Picket Fence Studios Blender Brushes, taking care to wipe the stencil and get most of the ink off my brush each time I changed colors. At the end I outlined with a Pigma Micron pen, added a grey brush pen shadow and finally a few Neat and Tangled Sequins. The sentiment is made with ancient alphabet dies and my trusty old school labelmaker.

For my second card, I started with plain white cardstock and used just one color per heart. I outlined again and then filled in the white spaces between the hearts with zen doodles. The sentiment is Hero Arts' Thinking of You die, cut once from purple cardstock and once from black, then layered to make a drop shadow effect.

I hope you'll be inspired to make your own "HEART-y" creations to brighten someone's day! ♥

Lauren Bergold

used up almost a whole roll

of sticky tape in a single afternoon!