Hearts in a Tree

I made these hearts for Valentine’s Day and hung them up in the tree in front our apartment to surprise Rem.

The tree already looked pretty even before I added the hearts, covered in blossoms. It snows down white petals if you give a branch a little shake.

People driving by smiled and some waved or gave me a thumbs-up.

Rem thought I was out taking a walk in the neighborhood.

He was amazed when he saw all the hearts.

Here’s some of my favorite hearts:

Next January I’ll put up a post on how to make these hearts.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

 

 

New Valentine’s Day Cards

I was busy at my craft desk this weekend making a bunch of Valentine’s. I really love making Valentine’s and, like last year, I’m not just doing one design over and over.

On Pinterest (of course), I saw some cute card that I wanted to CASE (Copy and Selectively Edit or Copy and Steal Everything or the PC variation Copy and Share Everything).

Before I started my first card, I punched a slew of 1.25 inch squares of paper and hearts with all three sizes of heart punches I have.  Most of the cards bases are 140 lb. cold press water color paper that I bought in a pad of 9 x 12 sheets.  So I cut a batch of cards at a time, trimming each sheet to 8.5 x 11 before cutting it in half and scoring it for finished cards that measure 4.25 x 5.5.

This card was inspired by this one.  My square punch is larger and I don’t have the beautiful “LOVE” stamp, but I’m happy with it.

Here is another variation on that idea.

Here is a simple patchwork of squares.

This is another pretty card using squares and hearts.  I loved how the little scalloped squares look and treated myself to a scalloped square punch.

These bird cards were inspired by Button Bird Art from Button Bird Designs.

I’ve made multiples of each card.  Not enough that I’m tired of each design and with variations in the paper, embellishments and greetings, they’re all unique.  I especially like these birds, so I made a whole flock.

I have lots of beautiful paper.  This card shows off a piece of it.

I think I’ll try a variation with a little heart under that turned-up corner.

Some cute stamps of vintage items are featured on these cards.

I also love these two bicycle cards but I don’t have a bicycle stamp.  Yet.

I’m really happy with the color scheme I’m using this year: red, black, white and turquoise.  I’m using silver ink and silver embossing powder with a heat gun for some of the greetings.  It’s a nice, finishing touch.

After creating the are for the front of the card, I always stamp and sign the back and stamp a greeting inside the card too.

Side note: I made it through my dental appointment today and though I feel pretty tired and a bit tender, I’m not too sore.  I’ll enjoy my busy weekend with friends all the more now that is behind me!

It is very satisfying seeing the finished cards all crowded together.

I’m off to a great start for my Valentine Production of 2014!

Thank you for your visit.

Valentine Time

It is 1/14/14, and Valentine’s Day is 1 month away. I’ve been itching to start crafting Valentine cards.

As usual, I look at Pinterest for inspiration.  A cute little Valentine plaque inspired this card.

I decided to go with a color palette for all (or most) of my Valentines: black, white, red and turquoise accents.  I’m using washi tape and lots of great paper from various collage projects.  This card with the black polka-dot bow is modeled on this one. The photo doesn’t show it very well, but there is a little dry-embossed heart to the right of the word “love.”  I used this technique last year.

When I was recently at Target, I scanned their dollar bins for Valentine-related goodies.  I found glossy red scalloped cards sold in sets of eight with their envelopes. One dollar a pack!

This is my first card using the scalloped card for a base:

Here is the card that inspired this design.

There are lots and lots of ideas and spring boards to generate other creative things and I’ve got loads of beautiful supplies.  Plenty more cards to come!

Thanks for stopping by.

love & hugs

I’ve been up to my eyebrows in valentines.  I no longer send Christmas cards but I do like to give out a bunch of valentines.  I make some for the women in my choir, a batch for family members, and a pile to give to colleagues at the community college where I work.  I also do a Valentine project and a card for my sweetie (2013 project photos coming soon). For all the hearts I’ve punched and beautiful greetings I’ve embossed, I am a bit red-faced that I didn’t do a better job of sharing much of that process with you!

In past years I would come up with one design and make multiple cards.

A few years ago I made heart-shaped crayons that were a part of my valentines.

It’s a good way to do lots of cards – production line style.  But sometimes by the time I made all my valentines, I was really tired of the design.

This year I did some multiples but I also did lots of variety.  I looked in my supplies and found some unused envelopes in different sizes and I also bought some small envelopes from Paper Source.  Then I started crafting different cards to fit in the different-sized envelopes. I showed some of the cards in these posts.

I made great use of my heart-shaped punches, washi tape was on many cards, I embossed greetings in gold or silver and I embellished with dots, buttons, jewels and charms. Here are a few of the valentines I made:

I also lined the envelopes for many of the cards – it’s easy to do and adds a lovely touch to the finished valentine.

Almost all of my valentines were created with pink, grey, white and turquoise paper but I did one that was completely unique: a green valentine for my friend who loves green.  Thanks for sharing this picture, Shook. 

What I didn’t do was my blog –  only one post before this for February!  So here are my belated best wishes, love & hugs to you all.

Valentines Inspired By…

The other day I followed a link on a friend’s Facebook page and found A Bit East-Coast, a blog by Keisha Campbell.  She had posted about having the flu and starting to make valentines.  As I’m still struggling with a bad cold and starting to make my valentines, I felt a kinship.

Actually, it was the cards that got me first.  Her photography is lovely and I was really inspired by her color scheme (grey, pink, & red with gold & silver accents) and love her designs.  I immediately started looking through my paper for grey and pink but decided I didn’t want to use red so found some turquoise and a little brown, with pink and grey as my primary colors.  I LOVE how these colors look together and like how the grey keeps the pink from looking too sweet.

I also pulled out my embossing powder because the sentiments embossed in gold looked so stunning on Keisha’s cards.  Instead of my usual card stock I found a pad of Strathmore heavy weight water color paper tucked beside my desk and collected some other embellishments and tools.  I cut the cards from the water color paper and I’m really pleased with how the heavy, textured, white paper works as a base for many of these cards.

So: first inspiration: Keisha Campbell of A Bit East-Coast.

I thought of Pinterest and decided to look through things I’d pinned.  I don’t often make the jump from pinning to actually making the things I’ve pinned.  But I loved how the first card turned out and liked getting away from my usual methods, so off to Pinterest I went.

This cute card by Kristina Werner (her blog is K Werner Design Blog) inspired this valentine.  I didn’t have the computer at my crafting desk so when I looked back at the picture I see how she raised the top layer with the heart cut-out, so I’ll try that when I make another one of these cards.

On my first go-round I punched my heart through both the top layer and the card front and then realized I only needed to have the heart punched out of the top layer!  Doh.  Oh, well.  I made it work.

This beautiful scalloped card on Pinterest linked me to Flickr and cheironbrandon’s Photostream.  The card uses lots of different paper and a circle punch with all the little circles layered like shingles or fish scales.  She has lots of other great cards pictured on her Flickr site.  I put on the bottom row and trimmed around the edge of the circles but decided on the next card I’ll try putting the circles down off the bottom edge – seems easier than trimming around them.

Another idea from my pins on Pinterest is this dry embossed little heart.  I followed the link and read the great tutorial by Arrounna at Bookhou at Home.
I followed her excellent directions but punched the heart with a small punch rather than cutting it with a craft knife.  I recycled a piece of a cereal box, punched out the heart than used my bone folder to dry emboss the heart onto the card. Check out her tutorial, her site and her shop.

I love how all the white space with the one little heart balances the busy collage tag.  I wrote about the tags here.

Here is my little template for making the dry embossed heart.

Hold the template and your card up to a lamp or window to get the heart aligned where you want it.

Here is the resulting heart close up.

Further inspiration was right at home.  Rem and I have a folding screen that I use to display cards we’ve received (or given each other).  It had been collecting cards (and quite a thick layer of dust) for some time. Dusting it and winnowing down the collection, I saw one of my favorite valentines came from my friend and fellow crafter, Jean.  The screen looks much better now, and we have room for new cards.

Here is the card I made (on the left) inspired by Jean’s valentine.  I love all the details her original has: the tiny circle tag with silver border hanging on the thread, the little red safety pin and the scrap of paper it’s pinned to.  I used a few staples, some washi tape, and added Dianne Dots as an embellishment.  I didn’t have the large heart stamp, so I copied the swooping design freehand.  I’m delighted with the results.

One last inspiration for this post, but this didn’t result in a card.  Instead it was a little tip that I love and have been using since.  I recently crafted with my sister Kathleen and her friend Michelle.  Michelle creates beautiful Art Journals (more on that in a future post) and she showed me something that seems to obvious and you all probably are doing it and I’m the last to know.  She uses an open magazine to work on.  As soon as her work surface gets wet or sticky with paint or glue, she simply turns to a fresh page!

Like this…

I’m constantly sticking part of my project upside down into some adhesive and this way I just turn the page and I have a clean surface to work on.  A friend passes the New Yorker on to me and I like how the slim magazine lies open (of course I read them first).  Inspirational!

I have more Pinterest ideas to try, like this and this and this too, and a month to go before Valentine’s Day is here.

I hope you have found this inspiring.  Thanks for stopping by.

Crayon Heart Valentines

When I first saw fat crayon hearts on Pinterest I pinned them to my “I Love This” board.  I love heart-shaped things (if you haven’t noticed yet) and these colorful, chubby hearts got my attention. I finally got around to making them just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Some of you may have broken old  crayons but I had to stock up.  I mentioned my shopping trip to The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse in this post and I picked up a whole bunch of crayons there.  I used some of the crayons in this post.

I sliced the paper wrappers and peeled them off the crayons.

Update: Most of the crayons I used were Crayola, but some were other brands.  I’ve noticed that a few of the crayon hearts have places that don’t draw as well – they seem to have less pigment. I suspect it was the other crayons and I recommend sticking with Crayola or other quality crayons.

For awhile I just reveled in this wealth of crayon color.

Then I chopped them up.  I tried breaking them into pieces.  First with my fingers than in a plastic bag with a rolling pin.  But chopping worked out better.

For my molds I used heart-shaped ice cube trays from IKEA.  I sprayed them with non-stick spray.  I’ve seen Joann, Michael’s and Target all mentioned as good places to look for heart-shaped silicone molds.  The ones I used, as I mentioned, were not made for going in the oven, but they worked out fine for me.

Set the oven at 250 degrees.  Fill the molds with the bits of crayon.  I like them sorted by color family.

Set the mold on a baking sheet – I covered it with foil to guard against melted crayon.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until fully melted.  Different colors seemed to melt at different rates.

This was from a different batch…it was almost done but needed another minute or two.

Once they’re done, let them cool completely before popping them out of the molds.  They can be done in different shapes (mini muffin tins, for example) but the hearts are so darn cute!

If you want to give them as gifts they look great in small cellophane bags, tied with a bow.

I am giving them as Valentines so I decided to stick them on paint chips as a background. I used Zots clear adhesive dots (an old package – I think the label is different now), two on the back of each crayon heart, to stick the heart to a paint chip. If your hearts have a nice, flat bottom, you can probably do it with just one.

Here is a tip if you haven’t used adhesive dots before: press the item on to the adhesive dot, then peel it off the backing.  Don’t try and peel the dot off and put it on your item. It will just get gummed up on your fingers and annoy you.

I really liked the idea of the colors in the crayon and the the color names on the paint chips.  I cut the standard paint chip strips into two-color blocks.  I also found some really wide paint chips and cut those into heart shapes.

I used Sharpies to write my greeting: “Wishing you a colorful Valentine’s Day!”  For a few of them I wrote “Valentine – You color my life!”

I put the  finished Valentines  into cellophane bags.

Using more paint chips, I punched hearts for tags  and stuck the tags to the to the back of each package with Valentine stickers.

Don’t you love the color names?

I signed the back of the tags since my packaging is clear and each heart tag shows through to the front of the bag.  Choosing different colors for the Valentine and for the tag made each package more colorful.

Front:

Back:

A box left from Christmas was just the right size for holding the Valentines and I had fun decorating it with stickers.

I’ve accumulated quite a bit of heart-shaped embellishments over the years and what better time to use them?

Thanks for the stopping by.

Crayon Wax Paper Hearts

It’s been a long time since I smelled this oh-so-familiar scent: melting crayons.  It is a scent from childhood and it brought back memories: the taste and texture of graham crackers dunked in apple juice, the smell of play-doh, the distinct taste of white paste (you know you tasted it too!).

I think most of us have made wax paper and crayon creations in the past.  Mine have been of the autumn leaf/crayon-shavings variety. These hearts are even more elemental than that.  Layer crayon shavings between two sheets of waxed paper.  Sandwich the waxed paper between sheets of parchment paper (or brown paper shopping bags) to protect the board and iron.  Once they’re cool, trace and cut out hearts in a variety of sizes.  Tape some bakers twine to each heart and hang it in window.  That’s it!

These hearts look so pretty in a window with sunlight shining through them, or hanging in front of a mirror.  I saw the beautiful originals on Pinterest and they’re from Martha Stewart.  Try as I might, I just can’t achieve the same results as Martha.   The ones on her site aren’t blotchy and are more evenly colored.  I think I should have used more crayon shavings.  To be honest, I’m also not going to sew a red silk thread on each heart to hang it up, like Martha did.  Tape and string works fine for me.

Crayon Wax Paper Hearts

Supplies:

Crayons

Hobby Knife to shave off bits of crayons

Wax Paper

Parchment Paper – Large brown paper bags will also work

Iron & Ironing Board

Scissors

Pencil

Scratch Paper  optional: to make heart patterns for cutting

Bakers Twine

Tape

Large Heart Shaped Punch (optional)

Directions:

Set iron to medium-high heat.

Lay a large sheet of parchment paper on ironing board.

Pull out a long length of wax paper and fold it in half.

Fold back the top layer of wax paper and shave crayons onto bottom layer of wax paper. For a more Martha heart, use only one color crayon per heart or colors that are analogous (very close together on a color wheel) and use plenty of shavings. Mine all had several colors of crayon.

Fold the top layer of wax paper back over the shaved bits of crayon.

Carefully clean off any bits of crayon that have dropped onto the ironing board.

Cover wax paper and crayons with another piece of parchment paper.

Iron the layered papers, moving iron constantly.  Keep ironing until all the the wax is melted and spread out.

Let cool.

Trace and cut out different sized hearts.

If desired, punch smaller hearts with a heart-shaped punch.  It works best with the punch if you layer a piece of card stock with the waxed paper before punching.

Cut bakers twine in different lengths and tape to hearts.

Tie lengths of bakers twine with hearts to another piece of bakers twine.

Hang in a window and enjoy the sun coming through the hearts.  I put mine in the window next to my dad’s recliner.

Thanks, as always, for your visit and comments.

Fluttering Hearts Valentine Card

This is an easy Valentine card that looks great. It is another idea from Pinterest and I’d planned on giving sewing another try.  I don’t sew.  I’m not really good with machines.  The card that I have adapted this from used a sewing machine and I liked it enough to try it.  But when my mom’s machine was on the fritz I decided it was a message that I should stick with my non-sewing craft-style.  So I used a stapler instead!

If you are not sew-phobic you might want to see how Ashley at The Creative Place does it.  Or just take a peek at her site anyway because she’s got loads of cute and creative projects.

I’m delighted with how this came out.  I’ve done other cards with rows of small circles or squares but stapling a second heart on top of each heart glued to the card and bending it upwards (like the wings of a butterfly about to fly away) gives a new, dimensional look to the design.

Fluttering Hearts Valentine Card

Supplies:

(Sorry, I was still planning on sewing – stapler not pictured)

Patterned Paper

Heart Punch (mine is from Martha Stewart and is 1 inch by 1 1/8 inches)

White and Red (or other solid color) Card Stock (yeah, I forgot the red paper in the picture too )

Paper Trimmer or Scissors

Adhesive (I use Tombo Mono double-sided adhesive)

Stapler and Staples

Directions:

Punch 24 hearts from the patterned paper, 2 each of 12 different designs.

Cut a 4 inch by 5 inch piece of white card stock.

Cut an 8.5 by 5.5 inch piece of red (or other color) card stock, score at 4.25 inches and fold into a card.  This is half a sheet of 8.5 x 11 inch card stock.

Arrange 12 of the different-patterned hearts on the white card front.  Adhere the hearts.

Fold the remaining 12 hearts in half.

Staple each heart on top of it’s matching heart on the white card front.

Adhere the card front to the red card stock

Sign the back of the card.  Admire your lovely creation.  Share it with someone you love.

I tried this design out with a larger heart punch, about 1.75 inches across at the widest part.  It uses 6 double hearts with the card oriented landscape instead of portrait. I should have cut the white card front slightly wider and slightly shorter.  It takes two staples for each heart and I think the smaller hearts make a sweeter card, but this still works.

Thank you for your visit.  Please let me know if you try out this card – I’d love to see what your Fluttering Hearts Card looks like.

Punched Heart Garland with Vintage Paper

Here is a sweet and simple little garland you can make. I was inspired by something similar to this when I first got on Pinterest.   I started working on this garland without going back to look at the original inspiration and I’m happy with my version.  Now that I’ve looked at it again, I might craft another garland using a larger heart-shaped punch.

What I think makes this interesting is the paper.  Little rectangles of paper cut from, in this case, old books, old sheet music and an old magazine.  If I had an old dictionary I was willing to tear up I would have used pages from that.  Newsprint would work too.

A few days ago, Rem and I went shopping at a wonderful place called The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse. They are, as their website says:

An ecological treasure trove of art & craft materials, educational supplies, vintage furniture, home décor, paper goods, fabric, and much more. Founded in 1979 by two Oakland public school teachers, the Depot promotes solid waste diversion and resource conservation through the Depot store and environmental education programs

The mission of the East Bay Depot is to divert waste materials from landfills by collecting and redistributing discarded goods as low-cost supplies for art, education, and social services in our Depot Store. The educational mission is to increase the awareness of school children and the general public regarding the green benefits of reusing materials.

I searched around and found a copy of Life magazine from 1963, a little pamphlet called The Revised Wine Cook Book with “favorite recipes of California Winemakers”, also from 1963, an Arithmetic Drill Book from 1924, a 1952 book of English Grammar Exercises called Brighter Grammar and a booklet of sheet music with the cover missing.

The pages in these old publications are a yellowed-ivory from age.  The different content gave me a nice variety of text, numbers and music for my garland.  My mom mentioned finding newspapers in the recycling bin at the Post Office recently when she was sending a package. She needed a little more packing material and found a Chinese-language newspaper.  I would have loved to include that in this project.

Garage sales, flea markets and thrift shops are all good resources for interesting old books.

A variation on this project that would also work well is double-sided printed paper with a Valentine’s Day theme.

Punched Heart Garland

Supplies:

Vintage Paper

Heart-Shaped Punch (mine is a little over 1/2 an inch across at the widest part)

Adhesive (I like Tombo Mono double-sided adhesive)

Baker’s Twine (I used Divine Twine)

Paper Trimmer or Scissors

(See our new giant red clock from IKEA?  I love it!)

Directions:

Cut out a bunch of rectangles.  Mine are 1.75  inches wide by 2.75 inches long. You will fold about 1/4 inch of paper over the string, so if there is a design or text you want at the top of your rectangle, keep that in mind.

Punch a heart approximately 1.5 inches from the bottom edge of each rectangle.

I like to see where the heart is going to be so I flip the punch over and look at the bottom so I can see exactly where I’m going to punch out the heart. (I just noticed the sticker on the bottom of my punch.  It says ” PLACE YOUR PUNCH ON DESKTOP TO OPERATE”.  Oh.)

Run some double-sided adhesive along the top edge of each rectangle.

Fold a quarter inch of paper with the adhesive over the baker’s twine. Finished length of each rectangle is 2.5 inches.

Leave about the width of one flag between each flag.  Repeat until you are out of flags or string or you decide your garland is long enough.

Now go find a place to hang this sweet and simple little garland.  Mine took the place of our string of Christmas cards as we slowly transition away from Christmas.  It would look lovely on a headboard, over a mirror or desk, or in a window.

Thanks for coming by.

Easy Paper Heart Ornaments

Here is a simple, cheerful paper heart ornament.  I saw it on Pinterest.  I’ve been having fun on Pinterest feasting my eyes.  Pinterest, as their site says,

“…is an online pinboard. Organize and share things you love.”

You can create an online collection of visual items sorted by categories that make sense to you.  You can also search and find things other people have pinned on their own boards.   When someone asked me if I had any blog posts on making paper ornaments I started looking for ideas on Pinterest.

These easy heart-shaped ornaments caught my eye and I followed the links back to Reese Dixon‘s site.  She’s got loads of tutorials for Christmas ornaments, other seasonal projects, clothing, recipes, etc.  She is seriously creative!

Paper Heart Ornament

Supplies:

Patterned Paper

Paper Trimmer or Scissors

Stapler and Staples

Ribbon or Cord to make loop for hanging

Glue Dots or Glue Gun with Hot Melt Glue

Directions:

If you use double-sided paper you will need two strips of paper that are 1.5 inches wide by 12 inches long and 2 that are 1.5 inches wide by 8 inches long.

If you are using paper with the design on one side only, you need 4 strips of 1.5 x 12 inch paper and 4 strips of 1.5 x 8 inch paper.

Cut your paper and for single-sided paper align your strips back to back with the design facing out so you end up with two double-sided 12 inch strips and two double-sided 8 inch strips.

Take one double-sided 8-inch strip and bend it into an open loop with the open ends pointing down.

Now bend one double-sided 12 inch strip over the first loop, keeping all the ends aligned.

Staple near the bottom of the open ends.

Make another set of double loops.

With some super-strong glue dots or hot glue, attach these two double loops together to form a double heart.

Glue dots barely show on this paper.

Cut a piece of ribbon or cord and glue into a loop for hanging between the two double paper loops.

A little strip of paper glue around the staples gives it a finished look but isn’t necessary.   Trying to describe how to do this is more complicated than just doing it.

Big, happy (and economical) hearts for your tree and if you are like me, you have some great paper waiting for this project.

Wasn’t that easy?