Card: Valentine's Day - XO

Inspiration: I received a Valentine's card from my husband one year that was a string of XO's.  While I knew that limitations in the size of my cardstock and the type of cards I make wouldn't let me do the same thing, I wondered if I could at least do something similar and this is what I came up with.

How I Make Them: Instead of my usual white or cream cardstock, I was able to find cardstock in a checked pink/white with the white parts of the checks actually small enough to just look like little dots.  I started by cutting the whole card out to look more O-like - primarily just rounding the corners.  Then I cut out notched V's on the 3 open edges to start to get the X.  On the closed edge, I use an Xacto knife to help me get it out without cutting through the rest of the card.  After I made the first one that I liked, I used it as a template to trace out where to cut the V's for later cards.  When the cutting is done, I use gel pens in red, pink, and silver to write lines of words across the X.  On the photographed examples, I wrote "Hugs and Kisses and Hugs and Kisses...".  I draw very light pencil dots at the inner edge of the V's on the O so that when I write inside my card, it doesn't show through.

Alternatives:

• This card lends itself well for Anniversaries, Weddings, and even Mother's Day.  Just change the repeated words.  For a wedding or anniversary you could use "Love and Marriage and...".
• It might be neat to make a set of cards with two overlapped alphabet letter shapes as a gift set of thank you notes for someone (as long as the two letters lend themselves to being overlapped like this).