My first Beate challenge card

It seems that everyone in the stamping world knows Beate Johns and her wonderful blog, which you can find here. Beate writes great tutorials that have really helped me grow as a stamper. She also does a sketch challenge every weekend, and this is the first time I've played along.

I think I'm about ready to take a couple days off from making Valentine's cards, but here is one more. Everything on the card is Stampin' Up!Last night I colored this mouse from the Happy Heart Day set with watercolor crayons - rose red and (I thought) pretty in pink, with creamy caramel for the mouse. I love playing around with these crayons since blending them makes lots of subtlety possible. I decided to use this image when I saw Beate's sketch. (Of course I didn't remember that the sketch called for the sentiment to be in the lower right corner, and I'd already planned my circles to go all the way down, so I messed the sketch up on my first try! Oh well...) It was when I went to color the flowers that I realized I'd actually used the regal rose crayon for the mouse and not pretty in pink, so I used all three colors for the flowers and made sure to add cardstock in all three. The large scallop square was made with my corner rounder punch - I only had to trim one edge a tiny bit to make it meet up on all sides. I couldn't believe it! I punched the circles with my 1" circle punch from regal rose and mounted the flowers with dimensionals, then taped them with sticky strip over pretty in pink grosgrain ribbon. The stamped panel is also mounted with dimensionals. The background is from the rose red designer paper pack and is cut to fit on a white card.

So the next couple days if you read my blog I hope you will NOT see: anything made with rose red, or anything that's a valentine. I need to step away and get some fresh ideas! This weekend is VSN on SCS so if I get to play, I will try to do something different. Woohoo! If you don't know about it, come read here and play along with us - it's always a blast!