Watercoloring a Heart Wreath

 This week Linda has chosen this collection of Valentine/Hearts in this video seen here on YouTube from Tina Williams Art. This video starts with a glimpse of the 5 styles of hearts she is showing as cards and what caught my eye was the 5th card on the right. Its an open heart with foliage along the outside of the heart white space. So, I thought OK that looks cool and I did fast forward through the first 4 cards I watched just a bit of each one being painted before I just caved and skipped to the end of the video. 

I had some printed paper ( Basic Grey) on the table and I decided to use an CREAlies Heart die to cut one out of a piece of it. It probably does not show up well but, that die does a stitched edge along the Heart and I thought it was a "different" shape, not so traditional or primitive. I used a water soluble pencil to trace around the edges of it on some Arches cold press wc paper.

So I started doing some simple leaves and petals trying to stay on the outside of the heart white space. ( the white dots are Windsor & Newton Gouache)

Added a little more and then instead of adding in purples. ( my brain balked at that right off the bat) I decided to do some wiggly grapevine wreath twigs in the other edges of the heart. ( I did paint over the top of the pencil lines and never did erase them.)

 Added some tan-ish babies breath type sprigs and more paint on those petals again. I was not really liking these blooms much but, I did add more gouache over the tops of all the paint when it dried again also and decided to let it ride instead of making it too busy for my tastes to use.

So, then I grabbed a X stitched square die to cut it out and trim it down a bit, it was tapped on two edges with washi tape but, it moved in the bigshot and came out like so. The good news is I didn't lose the painting but, it I knew just looking at it I would have to cut it down to the edges of the paint to get it to try to look straight again.

So, I did that, inked the edges with some Distress Oxide Vintage photo ink. grabbed that piece of basic grey I had cut the heart out of the middle earlier and distressed and inked its edges. The base is some Simon Says Stamp School House red cardstock and the sentiment is an raised faux cork looking krafty printed colored words from Momenta. I probably mangled that spelling. At any rate I think this will work as an Anniversary or Wedding card. If You'd like to play along with us, you can find this challenge here at SCS. Thanks for stopping by.