Hand in hand, heart in heart

Hello all, and welcome to the Artistic Outpost monthly hop.  From never having participated in a bloghop, this is now my second in two days!  There are amazing projects to be seen at my fellow DT members blogs, and they'd love you to stop by. Here's the full line-up:
Gerrie Johnnic, Lisa Somerville, Suzanne Czosek, Tracy Evans, Linda Coughlin, me, Terry Horrall, Kate Yetter.  That's some pretty exciting company to be in!

Our theme is Valentines, and I'm sharing my heart with you today...

I didn't really have anything obviously Valentine-y amongst my Artistic Outpost stamps... to be perfectly honest, it's not precisely my favourite holiday celebration, so stamps-wise I'm not really equipped - you'll notice this is not pink/red either.  

But my thoughts went immediately went to this enchanting pair from the Sleigh Ride set, and I decided I might be able to "alter" the image to suit the festival.

I started with a blank MDF heart and set to work with some Fresco paints and the PaperArtsy crackle glaze.  The base coat is in French Roast and topcoat in Nougat, for a warm, creamy softness.









I wanted to use a flourish around the edge, so I took the singing bird stamp from the Serenity set and inked it up partially so that I could just use the branches around the edge of my heart.

I blended some Gathered Twigs and Vintage Photo DIs around the edge, and then added some more Nougat paint with a brush to highlight the very edge of the heart, and provide a nice, defined frame.








On a separate piece of cardstock, I stamped the boy and girl in Archival ink, and cut them out.  This was the opportunity to "lose" the little Christmas tree the boy is holding, just by snipping off the end of it.  I used Vintage Photo DI to just add some gentle shading.

Then I cut out a little heart from a leftover coffee cup holder, it's just very gently corrugated which was necessary for such a small heart.








It was tricky to position it so that it hid the rest of the tree without covering up his face.  I think it just about looks as though he's holding on to it!

And in the girl's basket there's what looks like gingerbread or Christmas gifts, so I decided to cover them too with a tiny bouquet of mulberry paper roses - I like the additional dimension they give to the piece.








I layered in some frayed cheesecloth and stuck the couple down using doubled up padded tape so that they would stand proud of the heart by several millimetres.

The words, inspired by their interwound hand-holding position, were stamped with my new little alphabet in Sepia Archival ink.  I love how they look against the crackle background.

I also added a few of the delightful tiny wooden hearts that Trace of inkypinkycraft so kindly included in my tag swap package.  

I gave them a touch of paint to make them a little paler on top, but left the lovely naturally dark edges well alone. 

The finishing touch was some white woven string to hang the heart up with, and I wound a couple of the mulberry paper roses around the bow as a final flourish.

Thanks so much for dropping in today... I hope you'll enjoy hopping round the rest of the team, and I've no doubt you'll find oodles of inspiration along the way.  Next stop: Terry.  Hope you're all having a great week out there in Craftyblogland - see you soon!


Loving is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I'm entering this in the following:
Craft-room Challenge are playing Valentines