Altered Playing Cards, Week 20: Hearts and Love

For Week 20 at Claudine's Art Corner the challenge was to alter two playing cards with the theme Hearts/Love in honor of Valentine's Day.

Before we get to the playing cards, I simply had to show all my east coast friends who are up to their eyeballs in snow

that we have set record highs in this area for the past three days.

So, on my way out to retrieve my now empty trash container this afternoon,

I thought a few windswept photos might be worth seeing.

And although this ground is very dry, but fertile after mulching the leaves last autumn, there are still signs of green which means spring may be on the way.  Of course, we are supposed to get snow on Saturday and Sunday, just in time for the famed Superbowl.

But I've taken enough of your time, so let's get back to these APCs.  Once again, I didn't have many hardly any of the same supplies Claudine had, but I have hearts and I have lots of love, so I'm sure I can make things work.  I'm no longer stressing over having the right tools and products, because I've finally decided that for me, the challenge is not to make things exactly as Claudine did, but to use her theme and art as inspiration. 

I chose these supplies for my two cards: on the left, two of my handmade shimmering mists and on the right two colors of acrylic paint.

I'm not sure about commercially made mists, but my shimmering spray mists have a tendency to actually remove the gesso.

After four tries of spraying, then drying, then spraying, etc., I finally got something I liked for the background.  However, when I did, I lost the two distinct colors I had used for this first card.  Not wanting to waste any of my shimmering mists, I sprayed the card on a used file folder.  I'm sure you'll see it at some point in my other weekly challenge (Journal 52).

I realized I needed a second color, so grabbed some of my deep yellow shimmering mist.  I forgot to take a picture before I put it away.  I was trying to control the areas this color would go on the card, so dripped it from the mister (onto my hand, too).

While my first card was drying for the fifth time, I squirted out the very last of the red paint.  I was sick.  I love that metallic color and used it a lot in my Asian art.  Now it was gone, and I had more than I could possibly use on 10 of these APCs.  I chose this paint so it would cover the very thin coat of gesso I had applied to this APC,

not realizing how transparent this paint was.  Or how WET it still was when I applied the Butterscotch.  Needless to say, I had a mess on my hands.  Not mud, but blended colors.

Using my heat tool with the paint in this stage of drying caused the bubbles that eventually took over the card.  At least the backgrounds were FINALLY finished.

That's when it was time to pull out my heart stamps.  I have lots and these are only a few.  At first, I considered using the gifted never-before-used purple stamp on acrylic as a border, then found two others that were actually called border stamps!  I also discovered two stamps in a package I had never opened.  I believe I bought these several years ago when Big Lots was still in my neighborhood.  They sold sets like these for $1.00 (USD).  None of the stamps I have purchased for myself have ever cost more than $1.49 (USD), except the reindeer stamp I bought for this challenge a few weeks ago.  I simply don't pay much for stamps, since I'm not much of a stamper.

Speaking of stamping, it was now time to cull through the ones I planned to use and put the rest away.  I was off to stamp and finish these cards.

For "Love Lives Here," I used the heart stamp for the focal image, the heart border stamp around all the borders, added a bit of washi tape, and hand wrote the sentiment.  Note how the butterscotch paint bubbled, something that happens whenever heat is applied to paint that is nearly dry.

For "Love Out Loud," I used the other border stamp and the love out loud stamp. 

Here are both cards together.  Don't forget to visit Claudine to see her beautiful APCs.

And can someone tell me what "embossing paste" is?  I've never heard of it, much less clear embossing paste.  Looks like Claudine will be demoing it next week.

Thanks as always for your generous and kind comments.  They keep me going, even when I make unintended messes!