It Started Out Simply

But before I knew, one thing led to another, and another, and well, by the time it was done, I kinda liked it. I had such fun making an ATC last week for the Grungy Monday challenge, that I decided to make two more and build valentines around them for the kids. My son is is currently between sweeties, but has an abiding love of music so I started with Tim's tissue paper and the technique he showed us on the last tag of what apparently is the last tag of the 12 Tags of Christmas. Actually I started with white paper, colored that with some Distress Stain in Antique Linen, and then stamped a Memory Box word stamp on top of that. (Happily that qualifies the piece for Sunday Stampers - my very first!!! Huge fan of Hels, but that's something else all together....). I covered that with rock candy stickles.....perhaps I should show you what I'm talking about...

The flower on the ATC was made of grunge paper covered with tissue tape and then cut with the mini tattered flowers on my little hand crank Cuddlebug. I swiped the edges of the flowers with Aged Mahagony Distress Ink and bent up the top flower for some demension. The center is filled with strips I cut from a faux velvet leaf or two and glued down with a couple of beads and glossy accents. The hearts are Tim's; the top one is covered with some red tule and some fired brick stickles. Finally I twirled some copper wire around my paper piercer and slid a couple of black seed beads down the wire and tucked those under the flower in a pool of glossy accents.

For the background I started with watercolor paper. I mixed my new favorite red paint, Martha Stewart's craft acryclic in Chipoltle with Payne's Grey and a lot of water and colored the paper, mopping as I went along. Next I thought, oooo, I'll just spatter a bit of black on top for you know, character. Turns out there is a small knack to that. As you can see I ended up with a few blobs, but in the end, I kind of liked them. And I figured, hey, this looks like some of the T shirts he wears so hopefully he'll like it too. I dry brushed some of the red on top to make it not quite so dark.

And, wrapping up...I did the words on my computer and edged the paper with a black Copic. Added some gears and a couple of spinners, and mounted the whole thing on some black cardstock.
So in the end, I have a card for my son, my first Sunday Stampers, AND an entry for both Grungy Monday 36 - a Tim Holtz Valentine,  and Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge where anything goes...and it surely did.

Thanks to Gingersnap Creations which had a tutorial about speckled eggs yesterday which gave me the idea about splatters, Hels and Dyan Reaveley for the whole cut apart and layer words approach, and as always, the creative gentleman who inspires, Tim.

Celebrate Love.