Hearts and Butterflies With Love

Hi there.  Here we are at the start of another month and a month closer to the start of Spring.  I know I shouldn't wish my time away but this time of year seems to make my card making grind to a near halt and I seem to spend more time thinking and looking than actually doing, and when I do 'do' nothing seems to go smoothly.   I am not totally pleased with the finished result but at least it's a card.  Right, that's enough of that moaning and groaning, so here it is.

I based the card on this week's Freshly Made Sketch but unfortunately I have missed the deadline for entries, but anyway this is the sketch.

For the background I used three different Jennifer Ellory patterned papers from a freebie pad which came with a magazine a while ago.

For the topper I used a snippet of cream card and cut a circle using a set of Xcut Circle Dies into which I embedded the red and blue hearts.  The red heart was embossed with a Craft Concepts Embossing Folder More Dots, and the blue heart with a Cuttlebug Embossing Folder D'Vine Swirl.  To embed the hearts I cut and embossed them first using  a set of heart dies from Nellie Snellen the smallest of the straight edged hearts in the set.  I then used the die to cut the first heart shape in the cream circle.   I put the first heart into place and put the heart die onto the first heart and then cut again which took a piece out of the first heart and cut the shape into the cream circle at the same time.  I placed the blue heart into the space and glued it all together with the paper doily behind.

To finish I added the sentiment which was part of Sue Wilson's Framed Noel die.  There are four different words round the frame, and I had experimentally cut them out when having a play before Christmas and they had been sitting on my table ever since.   I thought the 'love' was perfect for the card so I also used a little butterfly, which I cut out of one of the patterned papers, to embellish the sentiment, and an extra butterfly of my own design, embossed with the More Dots EF.  I used some  Pearl PVA to embellish them and also used some on the blue heart and in two of the corners of the square white card.  This last idea was initiated by the fact that I managed to get some of the Pearl PVA on to the bottom left had corner of the card so I thought this might cover it sufficiently.  I didn't get the dots terribly straight, and I managed to smudge one of the dots at the top too so left a mark there as well,  but it did sort of work.  I told you it hasn't been going well lately ..lol. 

Thank you for looking today.

I am entering this in the following challenges:

Butterfly Challenge - No. 23 Butterflies + V is for Valentine.
Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 162 where we use up our snippets of paper and card etc.
Simon Says Monday Challenge - H is for ....  in this case 'hearts'.
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.