I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was working on my Valentine’s gift for my girls—a hand-stamped Love banner. I’m a big fan of stamping home décor and giving it as gifts, because I don’t have to worry about whether my style matches the recipients'. If they hate it, they can hang it up for a few days and then tuck it away in a box and not have to look at it for a whole year! (smile)

Of course, I’ve given my girls enough home décor items that, whether they like the style or not, at least they have things that look great together, because all the projects share a similar style.

I got the idea for this Love banner when I saw the OnBoard Heart book in the Occasions mini. I noticed it had eight pages, and I thought, “You could get two ‘LOVE’s out of one book. That’s a pretty inexpensive gift!”

Mom Pat was visiting when I was working on the banners, and she liked the idea but didn’t have the time to make a banner for all seven of her grown children, so she made each page into a hand-stamped “ornament” for each of us. You’ll see on her ornament that she added a little bling to the outside edge of the heart. It was easy to do—just use the larger circles in the Scallop Circle #2 die, and put one each behind the upper circular parts of the heart, then cut out the inside of the third scallop heart and snip the inside edge to make a long scallop strip for the “V” part of the heart. Did I lose you? Try it, you’ll get it.

I was going to add the same bling to the hearts on my banner, but I forgot until tonight, as I was getting ready to post the blog. Now I have a dilemma: I was so excited to have this first banner done and in the mail to Shalae so she could get it before Valentine’s day, and I don’t have the “oomph” to add the bling tonight—I need to go to bed! So do I keep the banner a day or two longer and add the bling, knowing that every extra day I take is one less day that Shalae will have it? Or do I just send it off as it is? What do you think?

Either way, I’m thrilled that the banner is either done, or almost done. I’ve finished the components for the other five banners (one for each of the five girls and one for me, of course!), so they’ll go much more quickly.