Valentine Chickies

I usually send a bunch of Valentine cards each February (to keep in contact with far-flung family and friends), so I'm still working on building up a good-sized collection. Today I'm sharing one I made with some sweet DeNami Design products: the Valentine Chickie stamp, the XOXO sentiment from the Love Sentiments stamp set, and the beautifully textured DeNami Magenta cardstock.

As soon as I saw the sketch for Skipping Stones Designs Challenge #111, I immediately thought of using one of DeNami's tiny chickie stamps in the circle elements. I stamped each on watercolor paper, heat embossed the images, and watercolor painted them using dye inks. Bright pink Chickie #3 was a happy accident--I'd already painted her yellow like her sisters when my brush, coated with magenta ink, slipped while painting the hearts. Oops! I fixed my blunder by blending more magenta in with the still damp yellow. But it turns out that I like my design even better with one bright pink chickie!

My primarily magenta color scheme was inspired by Barb's Rose-Colored Glasses photo in her Barbles Challenge #2. I love the transparent patterns cast by the wine glass on the background. I tried to capture that transparency by using vellum as the panel behind my circles in the sketch.

Don't forget that there is still plenty of time to enter the DeNami Anything Goes Challenge going on over at the DeNami blog. All you need to play along is at least one DeNami stamp--the rest is up to you! The challenge runs until January 30.

All of yesterday's snow is gone now, but Holy Anemometers, Batman, do we ever have wind today!!! At least the sun is shining. I just need to keep an ear out for fly-away downspouts!!

That's all for now, folks. I hope you find a little bit of bliss for yourself today--I know I have :D,
Emily