art begets art

It was about midnight last night when I realized I'd forgotten to post on the 14th...
It was a windy, cool day. I did take Deezel for a long walk on our rural road. It was one year ago today we first met him.

I met my artsy friends from school at Popover's in Portsmouth for afternoon art share and treats.We show what we've been working on or something inspirational.

Here's the 2/14/09 Daily Haiku entry;
it's a copy of the valentines I made for everyone at school.



I used red cardstock for the base, trimmed with gold using a Pilot marker. I attached a cream colored heart (I bought these already cut) and a tag cut from vellum with gold writing on it. I punched hearts out of the tag. I stamped "Happy Valentine's Day" -after I altered the stamp so the words wouldn't be straight . I trimmed it with gold dots and stamped a heart with gold. I made this stamp from an old eraser. An outline of a heart stamped in pink finishes the cards, but for the entry I wrote about the adventure Buck Wheat had when he got caught in the handles of a gold, paper bag.
2/14/10 Valentines Day
This year I made 15 valentines, I mailed five, gave away 9 at school and kept one that is being added to my journal. This photo is a bit blurry, but it's clear enough to show that I stitched hearts to a piece of felt and attached them to shipping tags.


I got the idea from Beryl Taylor's article "Sweet Heart Tags" in Quilting Daily
( Jan. 21 email article from Interweave). I had no silk, but had some chiffon, some tracing paper scraps, and cheesecloth. My fabulous Janome stitched through each collection and I added the decorative heart stitch. I trimmed the cards with red ink, added a layer of tracing paper, glued the stitched piece down and used some red cardstock for the vertical lines.


I so liked them grouped, I made a little hanging. I constructed 3 shipping tags 3" x 6" of pale parchment cardstock, glued to white cardstock to make a stronger base, with 505 Spray and Fix, trimmed with red ink. I made the felt pieces as I did the valentines , just a little bigger. I strung them together with red ribbon and dangled a pair of red hearts from the bottom with thread. And though Valentine's Day has gone by, I'll keep this hanging for a while, since today's the day I take down the grapevine wreaths and lights in the windows, I need something decorative to transition to spring.