Shabby Vintage

I'm going to be honest. I have never made a vintage card before. This is for two reasons 1. I don't fully get what vintage is other than old looking and 2. I'm scared of it..... mainly all of the patterns I have seen used. Every time I buy a paper pack I get at least one page that I never use because it looks vintage. Well I think I have finally gotten to grips with my phobia and this is what happened.

Simon Says challenged us to make something vintage and to add flowers. At first I wasn't going to try, but I thought, "If you don't try you can't learn". I bought a papermania paper pack a while ago as part of a goody bag. I have to say that I don't know what to do with half of the papers, but they have inspired a lot of the orange cards that I have done lately. The paper I used on this card was one of the scarier ones in the pack. I edged the pieces I was using with fire brick and then I got a little too happy with the candle. I learned that adding distress ink and then setting light to the paper just makes it burn for longer (wont be doing that again).

Dotties world asked us to do some distressing which is where I got the idea for the pyromania.

I die cut some card and embossed it using a Fiskars texture plate. I coloured it with Aged mahogany and Fired Brick then sanded it in places until the white core showed through.

The flowers all started off cream. I have coloured them with three different distress inks and added gems to the centers. I have added a heart charm on chain to the main part of the card along with some ribbon and gems to the base for a bit of sparkle, which brings me on to the challenge at CRAFT challenge who wanted us to use ribbon and sparkle.

If anyone can give me some tips on vintage card making, I would be most grateful. Please feel free to tell me what I could have done better with this card as I learn from your comments.