The heart has its reasons......

   Hello everyone! Here is a Valentines offering today...I started this blog in November and I have been desperate to get to Valentines - Roses, hearts , lace (and hint to husband - Chocolates!!!!) In fact I was looking forward to Valentines so much I made a card about a month ago...sadly my haste meant I had no idea what the challenges would be and the challenges I wanted to enter required hearts....and stupidly I chose my favourite flower - the rose. I know I could have just added a heart somewhere but it really didn't look right with hearts and I didn't want to just add it in to make it fit into a challenge.

    Never mind...I can always make another and this was such a joy to make....

   So time to get into my comfort zone - girly, pretty, flowery, vintage. If none of these appeals to you then look away quickly!

      I was browsing the blogs seeing if there were any rose challenges for this romantic time of year and I visited Our Creative Corner....nope, no roses but they did want a valentines creation and asked that you follow the sketch design. I had never done a sketch challenge before and was intrigued...I would give it a go.

         Here is the challenge sketch.....

    I won't go into my usual very detailed "how I did it" as it was very much experimenting and juggling - so here is a basic explanation.

    First two sheets of card were wrinkle free distressed. One was brown and greens (Gathered Twigs, Pumice stone and Bundled Sage DI's) and one was pink and beige (Victorian Velvet and Antique Linen DI's). I then cut out squares and hearts from both sheets of card, dabbed the edges with Pumice Stone DI and stamped some of them with a script stamp.

    Then I cut some various sized cream card, dabbed some Antique Linen DI and stamped various things over them - flourish, lace, script and flowers. Now I had a mass of different coloured squares and hearts. I began to play, switching the combinations around, adding and taking away, deciding and then changing my mind!

  The background of the card was a very pretty script paper. I blended some Antique Linen DI around the edge.











 I chose sage ribbon and added it to two of the squares as specified in the sketch, one going over the square and one under to add variety.. I selected several metal embellishments, made a flower with a metal brad centre, made a scroll, chose a word from an embossed sheet of valentines words.






 

Everything was dabbed with Antique Linen and Pumice Stone DI to give it a vintage look. I arranged it all on the card and decided it needed a lace effect so the lace die-cut was used.

 















 

And so there is my first ever 'sketch inspired' design!  Bit too girly to give to my husband maybe? ;o)

    I hope you like it. Thanks so much for being here and as always I would love to hear your comments - They mean a lot to me

   I am entering this for the following challenges -

Our Creative Corner - Make mine mushy
Try it on Tuesday - Get Ready to Celebrate Valentines Day (include at least one heart)
The Artistic Stamper - Hearts and Flowers
Simon says stamps challenge  - Have a heart