A Blue Valentine

Happy Groundhog Day! My neighbourhood groundhog is predicting an early spring. I have a feeing we're both just wishful thinkers. ;) 

I'm going to try to play in more card challenges this month, and first up is this week's CAS(E) This Sketch:  

I adapted a couple of the design elements, but I think you can still easily see the sketch in my finished card: 

I was wanting to make a *masculine* valentine, and this sketch plus the sketchy die cut heart gave me my starting point. The heart is cut both from blue foil cardstock and white cardstock - while the heart looks fine on its own, I like the dimension offsetting it on a white layer gives. Keeping to the blue theme, I discovered this patterned paper is a fine match for tumbled glass distress oxide ink. (The paper is ancient, but this is why I keep almost everything, you just never know when you might need it! Good thing we have a big basement...) Using the oxide, I stencilled the hearts then added a little bit of iridescent medium to activate the oxide plus add a bit of shimmer. I moved the sentiment to the bottom of the panel as I liked the balance better (and obviously the sentiment was too long), and added a strip of the foil down the left side of the card, again for balance. 

One more valentine done! I'm also adding this to the new Just Us Girls word week challenge "love" and Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday anything goes challenge. 

Supplies: Neenah white & $ store blue foil cardstock, Heidi Swapp No Limits patterned paper, The Ink Road Modern Love stamp, Memento Luxe Danube blue & tumbled glass distress oxide inks, Wow clear embossing powder, Simon Says Stamp scribble heart die, Heidi Swapp confetti stencil, Winsor & Newton iridescent medium