Printable Valentine Cards and Scrapbook Designs

Print and Make Your Own Free Valentines Cards
Or use these graphics in your scrapbooks or valentine table decorations
Shown here are photos of many different ways to use these free Valentine designs and Valentine pop-up cards.
See all the HOW-TO instructions and photos below. Might take this page a minute or two to load--it has many Valentine's Day Card illustrations. Check out our Free Small Sample Downloadable Printable Card HERE

There are many different ways to use the images in this set. Shown here are some of the valentines we made and instructions on how we did it.

	First off, we recommend that you use a card, cover or index weight paper for all card making. The possible exception would be the quarter-fold cards on Pages 1,3,4,5,6,7 & 8. They will do fine if printed on a good quality ink-jet paper. If you want to make card on Page 4 with a pop-forward center heart, then the heavier weight paper is best to use. Also, you will need to score your fold lines before you try to fold them. This is especially important on the pop-up cards in this set. We recommend a metal ruler or a wood one with a metal edge and a great scoring tool is a ballpoint pen that has run out of ink. Score on top of a stack of paper or a magazine works best. Just be forewarned that newsprint will transfer to your card if you score on top of newspapers. Dotted lines are for SCORING & FOLDING. Solid lines are for CUTTING. The card on Page 4 can be made either way as you will see below.
	Some of the valentines are designed to be printed on and cut from heavy paper. They are then folded in half. You should not have trouble finding envelopes at any office supply or discount store in the office or scrapbooking depts to fit your cards. There was a time when it was a bit difficult to buy small quantities of nice plain envelopes in different sizes, but not any more thanks to the popularity of computer made cards and hand crafted cards.
	To make sure you have exactly matching edges, try first cutting out your basic shape leaving a wide unprinted margin. Then fold your card carefully and cut both thickness of paper together at one time from the front. At that time you can cut closer to the printed image and get greater detail in your cut. The free truck valentine is a good one for a guy.
	A nice touch is to print the back side of your paper with Page 18 and your printer set to 'Draft' or "Economy" settings for a softer, more pastel look.
	The card on Page 4 or our Valentine Card set can be made either as a pop-out heart version or not. This photo shows it both ways. If you choose to make the pop-out version, just cut around the lace heart BEFORE you fold it with an Exacto knife and leave a bit of the paper attached at the outermost loop on both sides of the lace heart. You can see how the area behind the cut out heart has a print and is not plain white. That is because this card was printed on the back side with Page 18 of the Valentine Card Set before it was folded or cut.
	You can see here the back side of the paper that our pop-out heart card on Page 4 was printed on is printed with Page 18 on back. If you look closely, you can see that in this photo the card has already been folded once and the pop-out heart is cut.
	Now for the pop-up cards: You can make pop-up valentines in two sizes. The larger one is just one sheet of paper folded in half. The smaller one is quarter-folded. We have included both floral printed and plain template pages with the cut and fold lines clearly marked. Page 13 & Page 16 both make the smaller size quarter-fold card. One is printed and one is plain so you can use bright solid color card stock if you want. You simply cut the hearts from our Page 12 or Page 17 and glue them on the pop-up bases. Be sure to score your dotted fold lines and cut your solid lines completely before you try to assemble the card. It is not difficult, but your second one will be much easier than your first.
	The cards above were printed on the floral backgrounds. The cards shown here left were made by first printing our paper with Page 18 and then running it thru the printer a second time using Page 15 (large) and Page 16 (small). The second printing put our cut and score lines on our floral printed background. This large card, by the way, did NOT require extra postage to mail. I printed it on heavy weight paper and addressed the outside right on eh card and used a piece of scotch tape to close the long edge and the post office clerk even conferred with a second agent just to be sure, but both agreed that only a 37� stamp was needed. Yipee !
	Here you can see from the side how the three cut pop-up supports are folded forward on the dotted lines after they are cut. The separately cut hearts are glued in place on the supports. On this particular large sized card, I used two full size sheets of paper. I printed one with just Page 18 floral and scored it across side to side using a ruler to measure exact center and then glued it around the edges to my pop-up card. I did this to give the card more body and so that I would not have the empty openings showing on the outside of my card when it is folded flat.
	The smaller card will already have a nice front and back on the outside since it is folded twice and is double thickness of paper all over, but the large one will have the cut pop-outs showing unless you make it double thick by glueing on a separate sheet of paper. Here I used some fancy cut scissors and cut each end of a full sheet of bright pink cardstock before I scored it in the middle and glued it on the outside of my card. I used a dinner plate to make a light pencil line to follow with my scissors.
	The bold large hearts on Page 17 are used on this Valentine. The pop-up support template on Page 15 was printed on bright red cardstock. After printing the cut and score lines, the pop-up supports were cut, scored and the dotted line center fold and the card was folded forward. Then we took fancy edge scissors and trimmed off about 3/4 of an inch off each end following a faint pencil line we drew and later erased. THEN, we took a piece of bright pink cardstock and scored a fold line across the center side-to-side and glued it behind out red card. Lastly the big bold hearts were glued to the pop-up supports. The card will now fold flat to slide into a purchased envelope from Wal-Mart or an office supply store. This large card, by the way, did NOT require extra postage to mail. I printed it on heavy weight paper and addressed the outside right on the card and used a piece of scotch tape to close the long edge and the post office clerk even conferred with a second agent just to be sure, but both agreed that only a 37� stamp was needed. Yipee !
	Looking down into the above card partially closed, you can see how the hearts are glued to the popped out supports and how it will fold flat.

So as you can see, there are many ways to make a free Valentine Card from our graphics. We hope that you will devise even more creative ways to use the graphics in this Valentine Card Set. Please send us a photo of your unique cards ! These Valentine designs can also be used on scrapbook layouts and for Valentine Banquet table decorations.

See the Print Tips page for links to great places to get cheap ink jet cartridges.