Chalkboard Love Card

I've been reading about the popularity of the chalkboard technique in paper crafting, but have never really tried it myself. So this card was my big foray into this technique. I chose a stamp from this set by Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps for the focal image, and a greeting stamp by Hero Arts. I also used this stencil for the background. I used Hero Arts' Unicorn pigment ink for the stamping & stenciling.

First, I made masks for the heart & greeting. After adhering them with repositionable adhesive to the black background, I taped my stencil over it, and used a small sponge dauber to apply the Unicorn ink through the dots & dashes. To speed the drying, I hit this panel with my heat gun, being careful not to melt the adhesive holding the masks in place! When it finally dried, I traced around the masks with a white gel pen before removing them, to define those areas better. I used the Unicorn ink to stamp the focal image & greeting, then set it aside to dry again.

While I waited, I cut the pink cardstock to a standard A2 card size of 4.25x5.5", and adhered it to the card base. When the black panel had dried (again helped along by my trusty heat gun!), I drew a small heart next to the greeting with a pink gel pen, just to add a small bit of color and tie in with the pink mat. Then I took a small cotton pad, dabbed it lightly in the Unicorn ink, and rubbed it over the black panel, to add the "chalk dust." Then I mounted that onto the card front. I will be sending this to Operation Write Home for some hero to write home to his sweety.

I am entering this in the following challenges:

A Blog Named Hero's "Stencil It!"
Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Mother's Day or Special Girl"