Follow Your Heart ~ Sweet Pea Stamps

Hi there. It's time for our reminder post for our challenge at One Sweet Challenge, Sweet Pea Stamps' challenge blog. Our theme for the month of February is All About Love. We would LOVE to have you play along with us.

I chose to play with this gorgeous image by Norma J. Burnell called Be Mine. I love her stamps so much. They are intricate and tangled and so much fun to colour. I just love the detail as well as the beautiful faces. Check out that amazing owl! I coloured the image with Prismacolor pencils as well as a few Polychromos for shading the skin. Two tiny black half pearls were added to the open flowers on her head.I fussy cut the image leaving a narrow white border  to provide contrast and strength to some of the delicate parts coming off the image. Then they were matted in black cardstock and I fussy cut again. Once I finished, foam dots were added to the back of the image for dimension and to create a lovely shadow.

The background began with a rectangle of distressed green designer paper to which I added Nougat Fresco Finish paint through TCW's Harlequin stencil. This pattern was further emphasized with black scribbly outlining. Forget-me-Not Archival ink was sponged through TCW's Netting stencil in a random pattern and then more cross-hatching was added with jet Black Archival ink and an Artemio stamp. as well as a Joggles dot stamp.

To add texture to the background, drywall mesh was cut roughly and adhered in three places. Layers of  sprayed scraps were layered onto the background with the two longer ones tucked behind some vintage sheet music with a love theme. Stamping was added with Joggles Bubbles stamp and more Forget Me Not ink. Three TH rub-ons were added to these scraps to add interest and even more texture. A length of lace was adhered horizontally in the bottom right corner and was accented by a vintage button from my grandmother's stash. To help the eye move around the page, two other bits of black, a border and a corner circle were added to complete the visual triangle. Three little clips were added to the bottom left corner for balance.

The sentiment is a rather thick sticker from my stash. I coloured the white edge black and then matted it with black to give it some visual weight. Initially, I had a turquoise heart where the single pink heart is now and I didn't have the row of hearts at the bottom. It bothered me that there was so much pink on the image but it didn't tie into the background where there was no pink so I used some text paper sprayed pink to die cut four hearts. Much happier now...it makes sense because the pink is repeated in the background and runs on the diagonal through the image from each corner.

Thanks for stopping by today. I'm glad you did. When you get a minute, pop over to One Sweet Challenge blog to see the other amazing inspiration projects by the rest of this talented team. You still have lots of time to enter our All About Love challenge and if you head to the Sweet Pea Stamps shop, you will find many images you won't be able to resist!

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie