Life is sweet for my Valentine

Hi and welcome to Quilliance! If you've arrived here from Handmade by Regina on the Life Is Sweet blog hop, then you're in the right place!

Valentine's Day is nearly upon us, so I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to post a Valentine card design. And what could be a sweeter background for the card than these gorgeous chocolates which I received as a treat on February 14th last year? Before eating the chocolates, I arranged them into a pattern and took a photograph, thinking that it would make an ideal subject for romantic cards. I have printed a section of the photo directly on to cardstock for this project, but you could easily cut out and glue down a similar picture and add some hand lettering if you wanted to copy this design manually.

The quilling is all quite simple. First, I made two hearts by joining pairs of teardrops, using deep red strips that I had run through my crimping machine. The crimping gives extra body to quilled coils: they tend to retain their tension when you remove them from your coiling tool, and because of that they are quite easy to shape into matching pairs. I used two half-length strips to make the teardrops for the smaller heart, and two full-length ones for the big heart.

Then I looked for some different colour strips to use for the filigree work. I ended up choosing brown and cream to echo the 'chocolates' theme. The filigree strips are all just 'S' shaped coils, with the ends coiled in opposite directions. For the brown one, I coiled more at one end than the other to give an asymmetric effect. Then I made two smaller S's from shorter lengths of cream strips, gluing them on to the centre of the brown strip opposite each other so that they form another small heart shape in the design. So there you have it: two ways of making quilled hearts in one pattern!

If you are a first-time visitor to Quilliance, do have a look around while you are here - I'd be delighted to welcome you as a Follower.

Then, when you are ready, hop off to the next Life Is Sweet destination at Suzana's Quilling With Fun blogspot.

In case you've got lost along the way, here's the complete list of sweet hopping blogs for today's event:

North American Quillers:

Sandy -   http://sweetspotcards.blogspot.com/

Linda - http://www.krazyquilling.com/

Fran - http://quillcentre.blogspot.com/

Mona - http://quillingideas.blogspot.com/

Shruti - http://eenzybeenzy.blogspot.com/

Cheryl - http://cardsbycheryl.blogspot.com/

South American Quiller:

Regina - http://regina-ribeiro.blogspot.com/

European Quillers:

Philippa - http://quilliance.blogspot.com/

Suzana - http://quillingwithfun.blogspot.com/

Asian Quillers:

Lin - http://azlina-lin.blogspot.com/

Amna - http://alfardh.blogspot.com/
Yuenie - http://yueniesfancies.blogspot.com/

African Quiller:

Jacquline - http://cutekipepeo.blogspot.com/

Australian Quiller:

Bronwyn - http://quillme.blogspot.com/