A Guest at Freshly Made Sketches

I am thrilled and honored today to be a guest designer at Freshly Made Sketches AND I get to be part of their challenges for all of February!!  They are the perfect challenge for me - they are looking for clean and fresh, but not necessarily simple.  In their own words:


We are looking for clean-lined creations but unlike Clean and Simple challenges, we encourage lots of detail and embellishments as long as they maintain a "clean" look to your card.

And...I love the fact that if they highlight your card - you are a Princess or a Queen!!  It's not often that a woman whose dream day is a day in oversize sweats with inky fingers and glitter in her eyebrows gets to be royalty!

For this week's sketch, I put together a Valentine for my 7-year old niece.  (Hey SIL! Do NOT show this post to your daughter!)

This card is 3 1/4 x 6 1/4 which fits an envelope made by Stampin' Up.  It's a fun and unique size with which to work.

This card was actually planned to be even cleaner than it is.  I knew there was a Valentine in the Stampin' Up set Gift Givers but the set was stashed away in a room in which my son was napping.  (He is 16 years old, but at 6'4" he needs his growing sleep!)  I put the rest of the card together in advance.  When I finally got the stamp, it was much smaller than I envisioned and got lost on this card.  So I found my trusty Martha Stewart tags (they are called tags but are actually a variety of doilies) and dropped one behind the owl - suddenly, the focus is where it belongs!

• Stamps: Stampin' Up Gift Givers, Teeny Tiny Wishes
• Paper: Stampin' Up Crumb Cake, Regal Rose, Pretty in Pink, Berry Bliss dsp
• Ink: Memento Black, copics
• Accessories: EK Success ribbon slot punch, Papertrey Hibiscus ribbon, Stampin' Up heart punch and scalloped heart sizzlit, misc heart gems, Martha Stewart tags (doilies)