The next best thing to giving a Victorian Valentine card is to have made it yourself! A vintage ecard for Valentine's Day is a no-brainer, because all you have to do is pop one of the vintage cards designs below into an e-mail and write your own message. It's a little more work to make your own Valentine cards from one or more of these 20 vintage images, but with the instructions below, you'll find it's pretty easy. Also, links to all the supplies you'll need to produce stunning Valentine cards that feature hearts and flowers are included below, so you won't have to guess what you'll need.

Of course, you can use these vintage cards in other ways too. They're great for scrap-booking and other crafts, for decorating blogs and Web sites, or even for using on recipe cards for Valentine's Day sweet treats.

1. Choose a thumbnail version of any of the vintage Valentine cards in the right column. When you click on one of the thumbnails, it will appear larger.

2. IMPORTANT: Once you've chosen an image and see it larger, double-click on the larger image, which will make the best version of the art appear. This will give you the highest quality art.

3. If you have a PC, right-click and save the final version of the artwork to your hard drive. If you have a Mac, you probably already know how to save an image. I don't. :-)

4. If you have access to a greeting card template, just follow its instructions. If you don't, simply insert the art you want on your greeting card into a MS Word, Open Office or other type of word processing software, re-size it to fit onto the cover of blank greeting card stock (see below for examples) and then print it on card stock or heavy paper. You'll be cutting this out and pasting it onto the cover of your card, so make sure the art is small enough to fit. To be safe, size the art no more than two-thirds the width of the blank card (and even less if you follow the tip below about putting colored paper underneath the image).

You can then cut the printed version with a paper cutter, pinking shears or a craft knife and ruler. Once you have a neat square or rectangle cut around the image, it can be pasted to the front of blank card stock, similar to the types shown below on this page.

Tips:

* You can cut colored or glitter paper to a shape and size slightly larger than your image and glue it underneath your Valentine card art. This will from a border around your image give your card a more professional appearance.

* Use glitter to highlight some areas of your artwork -- but don't use too much. Light applications in just a few places will give a nice effect without warping the card stock. You can use glitter pens or light brushes of glue topped with loose glitter. See below for samples.

* Don't use liquid or gel glue to paste your vintage Valentine card images to the card stock; that will cause warping. Use some form of dry adhesive instead. There are some samples in the supplies section below.

Supplies for Making Your Own Victorian Valentine Cards

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