Valentine Card

Hi friends. Finally a home alone day so that I can work. :) Today I have a favorite new card to share with you. Oh how I love it. First I wanted to share a peek at my craft table. Lots of Crate Paper love this week. For my Project Life album I want to include weekly photos of my craft table since my crafting is such a big part of my life. Tip: Another monthly photo I want to add to my Project Life album is a monthly family with all four of us together. I think at the end of the year, a photo collage of those 12 photos would make a great Christmas card.
On to my new favorite card. I really love the colors found in Pink Paislee's Sweetness collection but haven't yet purchased any of the products. I think the golden yellow combined with the pinks and reds is such a pretty and unique color combo for Valentine's Day this year. I reached for my Crate Paper goodies and found many of those same colors in the Restoration line.

Using Papertrey's Mat Stack 3 Collection and coordinating die, I created a pink background with X's and O's stamped in grey from the Heart Prints set. I then die cut medium and large hearts using the Heart Prints dies from the Crate Paper patterned paper.
I'd like to share a few observations about my card layout since I love it so much. If you'll notice, the card elements are arranged pretty neatly. However, it's good design to mix things up a bit. You'll notice that the main focal piece is pretty symmetrical(meaning if you draw a line down the center, items on each side would mirror each other). You can definitely see that where I machine stitched down the center of that accent piece.

But I also threw in a few accents to create some asymmetry(meaning items are placed off center to create interest). The small heart is an example of this, it's placed to the right of the big heart. Another example is the *happy* sentiment. Using an EK Success label punch (from my On The Shelf post), I adhered it to the left and at a slight angle. I also placed my focal piece to the right of my card front instead of centered. A snippet of a Dainty Doily peeks out on the left side. And to counter balance the items that on the right side of the card, I kept the bow of my tied Wrinkle Ribbon to the left of my card. Just a few items to think about when you're designing your projects. :)
You might have noticed the grid paper background I used that has the rounded corners. I purchased some extra Project Life Journaling Cards. I knew I would find uses for these on my cards as well as my scrapbooking projects.
Hope you enjoyed my card today. I can't wait to send a few of these out for Valentine's Day.

On the home front: Snow is a comin', folks. We're expecting 3-5" but are right on the border for 5-10". Eek.