Follow Your Heart ~ Sweet Pea Designs February Love Challenge

Hi there. Today marks the beginning of the February challenge at One Sweet Challenge, the Sweet Pea Stamps monthly challenge. The theme for the month is Love and the DT is posting inspiration pieces to get your mojo going. I chose to play with this gorgeous image called Follow Your Heart by Helena Reis. I love the whimsy and detail in this image...perfect to star in a mixed media piece.

I coloured  my Lady in Red with Prismacolor and a few Polychromos pencils and then fussy cut her. Isn't her flowy hair incredible? She's beautiful and so fun to colour. I popped her up on foam dots and asked her to wait for the background to be completed. She was very gracious about it:)

The background began with my usual 6x8 inch rectangle of mixed media paper. I knew I was going to spray the daylights out of it so I needed the strength that type of paper provides. I used Starburst Sprays from Lindy's Stamp Gang in a combination of Hottie Patottie Hot Pink, Hag's Wart Orange, and Marigold Yellow Orange with a tiny shot of Witch's Potion Purple. Love the shimmer and the colour-rich background these sprays give me. I sprayed and dried, and dipped in the overspray , and dried until I was happy. The little tag was created with mop-up paper...can't waste a drop!

To continue the layering, inky black gesso was splattered and dripped in a random pattern. The skinniest drips were helped along with a straw. I love the spider web effect that gives as well as the contrast between the thicker and finer drips. White embossing paste was added through TCW's Tiny Circles stencil. While that was drying, I searched my old books for a page with words of love or intimacy and found a delightful passage from a 1945 book. The passages were torn out and added to the background so that a few of the sweet phrases were visible.

Now the piece needed a little contrast and texture. Black cardstock was embossed with a hearts folder and then dusted with Treasure Silver and Treasure Gold to highlight the raised areas. Sections were torn and added to the background in three places to help move the eye around the piece. A white chipboard open heart was coloured with Old Paper Distress ink and stamped with black text before being adhered to the upper left corner. The sentiment was printed on white cardstock, torn around, and adhered to the mop-up tag. It was then matted in black, given a heart brad, and popped up on foam dots. To complete the piece, a doodled heart border and outlining were added with a black pen, three enamel dots were added, as well as black mat was added to the red rectangle to frame it and provide more contrast.

Thank you for stopping by today. My lady in red and I appreciate your fine company. When you get a chance, drop by the One Sweet Challenge blog to see the other amazing inspiration pieces created by the Sweet Pea Stampers talented Challenge DT. We would love to have you play along with us and will be back on the third Monday of the month to give you a little more inspiration for our Love theme. There is the most incredible range of image styles from the talented artists at Sweet Pea Stamps...you are sure to find many must-haves once you are there.

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie