No Color Hug Valentine

In response to Unity’s No Color Valentine Challenge, my mind, as usual, turned immediately to creating a vintage card. I had been longing to try out my Unity background stamps, so I grabbed a piece of white paper, grabbed a bunch of sets and started stamping. I ended up loving the look and added some words, Smile, Hug and Kiss. The kits used to create this paper were Unity’s Hug, Happy and Cherish Your Dreams. I die cut the paper and backed it with black paper. Given the size of the background I created and that I really liked it, I decided to use it as part of a 5.5 x 8.5” sized Valentine card for my husband. 

I found Graphic 45 paper that would make a good foundation, attached black lace to the side, backed that with black paper and mounted it onto the white card base. I then found white lace and fixed that to my homemade paper and mounted that onto the card. Now I needed to find the right sentiment and focus image. I tried several options before I finally settled on using the heart/butterfly stamp from the July 2017 Kit of the Month. I knew I wanted it to be an almost solid simple black image, vintage inspired and Valentine related and it fit perfectly. I fussy cut the heart image. I wanted to use white ribbon and, with the heart focus, a Melissa Francis key, so I created an embellishment combining the two and added a small string of pearls I received as a freebie from Unity. I then looked for a sentiment I could turn into a heart and found that the sentiment from Dec 2017 Kit of the Month would be a good fit across the board. I had already pulled out the Bo Bunny Fanciful Dies set to potentially use as embellishments. I decided to see if I could create a heart frame with scrolls and fussy cut black scrolls to do just that. I mounted all components and completed the card by adding another embellishment above the butterfly heart.

Now that the card is completed, I’m not sure if it’s too busy (a hot mess) or if it works well. I’ll let you decide! Thanks for reading my blog, hope you’ve received some new ideas from it and that you have a great day!