Hello, all!!  Tgmousechick Kim here to bring you this month’s Designer Showcase.  There has been an explosion of Valentine/love themed kits by our fabulous ScrapMatters designers, and I wanted to make sure you knew about them.  What’s the theme for today’s hybrid goodie?  Valentines!

Valentines are a wonderful project!  They are a low-risk project to experiment with hybrid, and they are kid-friendly- which is welcome for cold, snowy days in the northern hemisphere!  You can design and print, and your children can add the fun embellishments.  They’ll have the best-dressed valentines on the block.

Enabler alert!!  You can find all of the latest valentine’s kit that have been uploaded to the Scrap Matters store here.

Goodness, where to start?  How about a set of valentines using the awesome daily download going on right now- Girls Rock?  This is a collaborative kit between Happy Scrap Girl, Jeni Hopewell, and Brenda Smith.  Bright, funky colors, and a music theme.  They made designing fun cards so easy:

These were such an easy printable project, but it was also fun to “kick them up a notch” with glitter glue and brads.

Next up, is the kit “Blissful Romance” by Simply Sweet Designs:

And then there’s the adorable “Always Kiss Me Goodnight” by Jeni Hopewell:

These 2 projects show a more traditional “paper” approach- the digital aspect involved resizing the papers to make them smaller, so you can enjoy the argyle pattern or the word art on a smaller scale.  The papers were printed as unlayered squares, I trimmed them to the sizes I needed with my paper trimmer, and I did the layering by hand.  With the “Goodnight Sweetheart” paper, I tore the edges and inked them with chalk ink before I added it to the background paper.

Here are a couple of ideas using two kits by Britt-ish Designs: “Hustle and Bustle” (the reds and pinks allow this Christmas kit to do double duty!!) and “Decadence”:

There’s also the kit “So In Love” by Designs by Tater- don’t you love the soft blue?  Oh, I so love my glitter glue to accentuate the digital glitter effects:

Finally, here’s an option that’s a little more boy-friendly- Lil Love Bug by GG Digital Designs:

These valentines span the continuum of the possibilities of hybrid- from the concept of the printable project as demonstrated with Lil Love Bug, to printing with the addition of “real” embellishments, to printing out shapes of digital paper and layering them by hand (as shown in the “Always Kiss Me Goodnight” projects).   Can you find a place along the continuum?

If you like the layout designs, be sure to check out “Love In The Library” Hybrid Valentine Templates- I had so much fun playing with everyone else’s kit, that I needed to make a template kit to use with them.

And now, how about a freebie?  January’s Daily Download team of Happy, Jeni, and Brenda let me offer you the Girls Rock Valentines as a printable sheet!  Thank you, Ladies!  I had way too much fun putting these together:

http://www.4shared.com/file/81543033/21b40890/sm_geekyd_GRPV.html

I’d love to see how you alter these to fit your style and hybrid comfort level!

That’s all for me this week- have fun with your latest hybrid mission!