A Little Piece of my Heart!

Welcome to Magpieheaven! Over at PaperArtsy the challenge is currently to use Grunge Paste and to try to move away from the obvious stencils technique. Leandra has found some incredible inspiration for us with dramatic and unexpected ideas for using this very adaptable medium. I loved Liesbeth Fidder's incredible stained glass effect, which has to be seen to believed. Please do take a look here  if you haven't marvelled at it already. And Lou Collins wood grain effect - not to mention Wanda's lovely textured use of spring colour have been so inspiring! Unfortunately life has been presenting quite a few challenges of its own recently, so creating has been squeezed into tiny time slots and I'm going to have to leave the really 'heavy-duty' experimenting for when I have more time. I have played along with Grunge Paste a little bit this time, though, because I needed to make a card for a special friend. I've used an idea I learned on a workshop with the wonderful Lin Brown!

I started with some scraps I had from previous projects, including some basic, Treasure Gold Grunge Paste stencils of Lin Brown's leaves; a little Lynne Perrella heart and a Sara Nauman sentiment stamped onto some 'mop-up' card. I printed out some of my own art-work, which I use for creating little peg-dolls. I started to play straight away, giving her a pierrot hat from triangle cut out of a Lin Brown bird. I liked the way that tiny heart was now a different feature. A theme was beginning to emerge!

I then cut my Grunge Paste scraps into tiles of slightly different shapes and sizes, arranging them onto a piece of card.

Next step was to paint my card, so that the little Grunge Paste tiles become integrated into the background.

I do hope it won't be too tedious to look at the different stages my background went through before I was satisfied with it and ready to add my feature images! This is a layer of Caribbean Blue and one of Guacamole - gorgeous colours, but they needed to be toned down.

Here they are with a wash of Blue Oyster. Eventually I planned to sand the card too so that colours over the Grunge Paste would be varied.

I added some stamping in Snowflake - Sara Nauman's script and little circles.

Finally, I added two Sara stars, stamped in Fresco paint then clear embossed and a wash of Blue Glass and some dabs of Hey Pesto and just sanded. Adding Treasure Gold in Sapphire, Green Amber and White Fire and rubbing and sanding is the final effect. It is so difficult to photograph how the Grunge Paste looks, but it does really shimmer.

Now all that remained was to add my foreground detail and sentiment. I used some Glossy Accents on the heart and fixed my art work with dimensional pads. I hope something of the effect of the GP Treasure Gold tiles; the glossy heart and the Treasure Gold scrap of lace shows through on this picture.

 My friend has such a generous and loving heart that I thought the theme suited her perfectly. The idea for the blog title just occurred to me because this card is created from little pieces and also a little piece of my heart goes with it. The Janis Joplin song, of course, deals with heart-ache, but the support of good friends is so welcome when we feel low and the very best antidote to heart-break! Thank You so much for stopping by today and looking at my Grunge Paste background which I should like to link up to PaperArtsy here.