Chalky Love Flowers

Hi friends!  It's Friday and I'm here to share a sample for this week's Viva la Verve August Week 4 Sketch. It's the final sketch of the month, so be sure to get your entries in by Thursday 9/3 for a chance to be entered into our monthly prize drawing!

When I originally saw the sketch, I immediately imagined a chalkboard with a back to school theme in my head. But this morning when I finally got a chance to stamp, all I could think about was the Love's Flower set.  This set has been out of stock for almost a year and a half (that's a long story about forced vendor changes and lost files and toddler twins), and finally arrived back in stock this week!  It's one of my most favorite sets and perfect for the chalkboard look that is this week's Mix-Ability challenge on Splitcoaststampers.

I started with a piece of black cardstock, stamping the John Lennon quote from Love's Flower in Versamark and then sponging with white PanPastels.  I added a few highlights with some Prismacolor pencils.  Next I did the same with the heart bloom stamp, creating a fun little trailing border down either side of the panel, brushing with white chalk and then coloring with colored pencils.

I used the same technique for the flowers, finishing off with white gel pen accents to make the flowers stand out and then fussy cutting and popping up over a crimped old olive strip of cardstock.

For the background piece, I started with a piece of smoky slate cardstock and stenciled some whipped spackle (mixed with a couple drops of blushing bride reinker) over it using the Doilies stencil from Tim Holtz.  When that dried, I sponged some pink PanPastels on the edges of the smoky slate panel, and a bit over the stenciling as well.  I finished off with some black soot dots made with the Dot Fade layering stencil, and then distressed the edges and put it all together.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!  Be sure to check out all the back in stock products, which are 20% off, along with the rest of our Anni-VERVE-sary sale!

Viva la Verve August Week 4 Sketch

Enabler's List
Stamps: Love's Flower (Verve Stamps)
Paper: basic black, smoky slate, old olive (SU!), white
Ink: versamark, prismacolor pencils, PanPastels, black soot distress ink, white gel pen
Accessories: doily and dot fade layering stencils (Tim Holtz), paper crimper, pink pearls, whipped spackle