Lickety Split: hugs and kisses in 10 minutes

Here we are with another Lickety Split post: super-speedy projects that can be made from scratch in less than 15 minutes. This one didn’t even take 10 minutes. Of course this means they are simple – not being a superwoman – but hopefully they still look good.

Coming from a generation that was taught that punctuation and grammar matter I am not the biggest fan of text talk generally. Although I often break the language rules now, either deliberately, or because I have genuinely forgotten them! But some of this new shorthand is winning me over, gradually. I do like ‘hugs and kisses’ expressed like this. I have embraced LOL and although I will probably never love it or send it XOXOs I understand and appreciate its usefulness. It is good for language to change, but I hope it remains colourful, descriptive and rich. That would be amazeballs! OK, so that new word is pretty darn spanking….

To make this I used a set of letter dies in a quite unfussy font, one card blank, a scrap each of black and red card and that was it. I cut the X and O to represent hugs and kisses twice each and then, because the die set had a small heart too (along with numbers and ordinals, very handy) I thought I may as well add a couple of those for good measure.

For the positioning of the letters I laid a good solid ruler across the card at the height I wanted the letters to be. Then I found the centre point: my card measured 14.5cm across, so the centre was 7.25cm. I know, I should have made it a bit easier on myself! So, back to noting the centre point. I then positioned an O at 7cm on the ruler and an X at 7.5cm to get good spacing, and butted them up to the edge of the ruler as I stuck them down, to get them straight. Personally I find this easier than lots of fiddly measuring and marking. After that I just eyeballed the spacing for the outer two letters and the hearts.

You don’t need dies to do this – stamps would work but the alignment might be a little trickier. Although you could always just go for the trusty ‘intentionally wonky’ instead. Letters could also be printed and cut out, or just printed onto card and folded.

There are, after all, plenty of words out there!

Dies: Docrafts Xcut Wedding Alphabet & Numbers