Valentine’s Day Craft: Specimen Art Tutorial

I’ll admit it.  I’m not super into Valentine’s Day.  But I DO really love crafting, and of course I love my husband!!  So I figured I’d make a little craft to surprise him and get in the spirit of Valentine’s Day this year!  I decided to make my first Valentine’s Day specimen art:

This Valentine’s Day craft is SO simple to make, and the whole thing took me less than 1 hour from start to finish!  No excuses, ladies!

I have always wanted to try my hand at specimen art, but I wanted to give it a little “punch” of something different.  I think this one worked out well!

I borrowed a heart punch from my mom’s Creative Memories stash.  If you don’t have one of these, I know they have tons of heart punches at Michaels.  I picked a fun zebra striped scrapbook paper that I already had in my “stash”:

Then just start punchin’:

I knew I was going to use a bigger frame, and the white paper I had wasn’t going to be big enough to fill the space.  I made a “mat” out of more of the same paper that I used for the hearts.  You could easily use a different paper for this to switch it up a little bit too!

Next is the part I debated between doing or not.  See, I’m not a meticulous crafter.  I usually just “eye-ball” things and adjust as I go along.  Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t.  I decided to suck it up and make a grid for where my hearts should go on my paper. (like my washi tape embellished ruler?)

I put the grid behind my white paper, and I secured the hearts with a tape roller.  I left space for where I wanted to deviate from the specimen art:

Then I just used scrapbook letters and a punch of glittery cardstock to finish it off!

I really love the finished product!!  And the hubby thought it was “really cute” when he saw it greeting him when he came home today

Side note: does this happen to anyone else when they’re trying to take pictures??  Haha Buckley is such a goof – I had to keep pushing him out of the way when I was on the floor taking pictures   See that tail moving a mile a minute?  He was looking for squirrels!

Have you ever made specimen art before?  I don’t think this will be my last time – it was so simple and it looks so cute!

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