(gah!) PINK!!!

we've got a very special challenge this time at shopping our stash: first, it'll run for two weeks instead of just one; but also, it's a tribute to our late, great, friend and former SOS leader, leslie hanna, whom we still miss very much. so of course we thought it only fitting to make cards featuring the color leslie absolutely loved... or rather, loved to hate: (gah!) PINK!!! ♥

loose floral watercolor painted with peony, fuchsia, wisteria and lime green colorbursts on strathmore watercolor paper, then cut into small hearts using a set of (absolutely ancient!) provocraft/cuttlebug nested heart dies as templates; love stamp: mft; typewriter alphabet stamps: graphic 45; elderly scraps of cardstock that were just the right size (dontcha love that?!): core'dinations (shimmery charcoal) and bazzill (gah! pink!); glossy white cardstock: paper accents; permanent black pen for outlining: pitt artist pen in S nib by faber castell; inks: ranger archival and distress; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

it's no secret that i love pink as much as leslie disliked it. we often laughed at how complementary our tastes were; as well as the fact that we envied each other's opposite skill sets: leslie wished she had what she called my "collage gene" whereas i always drooled over the fact that she could do CAS design with amazing ease. this card isn't quiiiiiiite "clean and simple" it's more like "grungy and simple" i suppose; mostly bc to this day i cannot use black ink on white cardstock without getting a big smudge. so i deliberately incorporated a bit of mess right from the start, so that my later unintentional booboos would look like "i meant to do that" lol!

i started out with a very loose floral that i painted with my favorite pink shades of colorburst (fuchsia and peony) as well as a tiny bit of wisteria for the flower centers and some lime green leaves. i cut my handmade patterned paper into small heart shapes, outlined and inked the edges and set them aside while i built my grungy but white-space embracing (well, sorta) background. the set of graphic 45 alphabet stamps are one of my all-time faves, but, being wood mounted, they are difficult to line up precisely. on the other hand, once you know that, you can design around their beautiful imperfection. which i did by making a bit of a background for where i thought the hearts would go, using one small "love" stamp from an MFT sentiment set that stephanie gave me, and two shades of pink distress ink (spun sugar and picked raspberry) plus a little bit of off-stamped black ink. then i tacked the hearts on with just a teeny bit of adhesive and machine stitched through the not-quite-center of each one. 

i'm playing along with sketch saturday, who've provided this beautiful sketch to inspire us this week (i have flipped it horizontally):

i hope you'll check out all the gorgeous (gah!) pink creations from my design team darlings at SOS, then start planning one of your own!  ♥♥♥