CAS Watercolour February Challenge - love

Valentine's Day is tomorrow, and I think the challenge Marcia is hosting at  CAS Watercolour is perfect for the season.

Here's my card:

[How I made the card]
1. Painted a freehand heart with dark pink watercolour.
2. Die-cut the watercolour paper with the cross-stitched frame die.
3. Painted a piece of watercolour paper in pearlescent red.  Punched out a small heart and die-cut the sentiment from the piece.
4. Punched out a small heart from silver glitter paper.
5. Glued the red & silver hearts and the sentiment onto the front panel.
6. Adhered the front panel to the card base. 

It sounds easy, right? But it actually took me a lot of trial and error to get to this point.

Here's the picture of the first 2 original heart ideas.

[Left] Shimmery red watercolour on black cardstock. The color turned out to be shimmery BROWN, not red...
[Right] Dark pink watercolour paint on regular watercolour paper. Hmmm...it looked flat, so I pasted glass beads over it. It looked great but now it kind of lost the watercolour look and looks more like a card/heart for CAS Mix Up Challenge...

On to another try and I even took a picture to link it up. 

Painted a dark pink wash on watercolour paper and spattered Perfect Pearl solution over it. Drew the outline with Silver Stickles to give definition.

I still didn't like the "overworked" feel with this card.

Being at my wit's end, I asked my handsome in-house critic and one of his suggestions was to draw a heart freehand. I did it and I liked the results much better!

Thanks for stopping by today!


Paper: Whisper White, Distress Watercolor Cardstock (Tim Holtz)
Ink: Gansai Tambi (Dark Pink - Kuretake), Pearlescent Colours (Red - Fine Tec
Accessories: Dies (Hearts Collection, Expressions Thinlits - Stampin' Up!, Cross Stitched Rectangle - Cat Scrappiness), Itty Bitty Accent Punch Pack (Stampin' Up!), Ice Stickles (Silver Ice - Ranger), Perfect Pearl (Ranger), Thin 3D Foam Squares (Scrapbook Adhesives)