Love is in the Air

Valentine's Day brings out the little kid in me, with memories of small, inexpensive valentines exchanged between elementary classmates, eating teeny heart-shaped candy stamped with romantic words, and making elaborate heart shaped valentines trimmed with paper lace for my parents.

Seeing the new rag paper hearts on Gwen Lafluer's website brought out my inner artsy-crafty kid. They were in several shades of pink, and pretty all by themselves, but I knew I wanted to embellish them. After all, Valentines are meant to be over-the-top and schmaltzy, aren't they?

Lots of new supplies recently arrived. I used the new stencil, pink hearts and scrap cherubs
and flowers for this year's valentines.

I got to work mixing up shades of pink, and sponged various stencils onto the paper hearts. I found that some of the designs that I didn't expect to work, such as the deco series, looked wonderful on the paper hearts. I started out carefully, but as I got into the creative groove, I began mixing and matching stencils and colors and working on several hearts at the same time. And I got a little sloppy, but I covered any blobs and misprints with other stencils. I also knew that I would be adding cherubs, lace and words and some of the mistakes wouldn't show.

White acrylic was sponged through the Ornamental Petals Mask stencil onto a pink heart.

A Deco Border looked surprisingly good on the hearts, and covered up some blobs of paint that
leaked out when I printed the Ornamental Petals.

On a mauve heart, a pink Decorative Folk Flower looked just right.

The Ornamental Petals Screen looked good with shades of pink on a mauve heart.

The Ornamental Petals Screen was carefully lined up with the point of the heart before printing.

The Deco Border has a 1960s look when used with pink paint on a peach heart.

Here the Decorative Medallion stencil was applied in light pink on a mauve heart.

This valentine has a peach paper base, with the Deco Border and Decorative Medallion stencils. The white blobby misprint didn't matter once the center hearts and wings were added.

The stenciled paper hearts could have been left un-embellished, but what's a Valentine
without words, or cherubs or flowers or lace?

When I finished, they looked good. However, my inner child cried, "More, more, more!" So, the next step was adding some scrap cherubs and flowers. And some lace. And yarn. And decorative brads. And little hearts.

So I pulled out my boxes and bins and rifled through my stash of ribbon, trim, brads, buttons and lace looking for things that said "valentine." I "auditioned" different arrangements to find the right harmony of color and design.

My work table...creative chaos!

"Auditioning" various elements to see which to place where.

One thing I particularly wanted to use was some handspun yarn created by Artist Tribe member Lynda Shoup. I found a valentine in just the right shade of pink to harmonize with her yarn, and decided to stitch it along the edge.

The beautiful, hand-spun pink yarn matched the paint nicely.

An awl was used to punch holes, then the yarn was carefully threaded through.

After the yarn had been threaded through, I added white Nuvo Drops between each stitch.

I had carefully trimmed the excess paper away from my scrap cherub and floral bouquets. I also decided it was the perfect time to use some pink and white covered brads that I had been hoarding for about 10 years.

Fabric covered brads were placed along the edges of one valentine. The placement was planned on the back of the valentine, and an awl was used to poke the holes.

I had a rusted folk-art heart that went on one valentine, but I traced around it and cut several paper hearts from scraps of pink painted cardstock.

An elongated metal folk-art heart was the template for some pink paper hearts.

They still needed words, so I stamped "be mine" and "love" on some pink paper. I also used pink Nuvo Drops for dimensional interest and hand-wrote the word "love" on one piece with the pink Nuvo Drop dispenser tip. On another, I used a small floral punch to create peach daisies, and used pink mini brads as the center, then decorated the edges of a pinkish heart. They circled around the rusted heart, to which I added some whimsical mini wings.

This valentine had a border made of punched paper flowers with a mini brad center.

Here are the final valentines...now I just need to decide who to send them to!

In February, many of the Gwen Lafluer Artist Tribe are showcasing creations that honor Chinese New Year. You can check out their work here, and also save 15% on any of the items in the Exotic Orient section of the website with the coupon below.

Love According to Rumi

The minute I opened my jar of Dina Wakely Crackle Paste, I knew wanted to use it for a Valentine’s Day project. Somehow I felt that it would work well in a heart shape with pink shades, and represent how the human heart stays whole and strong even though it may have cracks and scars from a lifetime of emotion.

I tested the paste on several kinds of paper—it worked great on cardboard, cardstock and heavy colored paper, especially black. On shiny surfaces, it cracked and peeled off. When I tried it on red tissue paper, it shriveled the paper too much. For this piece, I selected a small piece of heavy orange paper, and, after taping the corners down, pulled the crackle paste through a harlequin stencil using a big plastic flat-edged spatula.

Some of the paste leaked under the stencil…mostly due to the fact that I was hurrying. It wasn’t that I didn’t have enough time—I hurry because I am excited and impatient when I am in the “art zone.” Once the paste dried, it didn’t matter—the smears added to the textured effect. I decided to cut it into a heart shape.

 

For the background, I used Derwent blocks in shades of pink, red and orange on a white journal page. After smearing the color with a very wet paintbrush and mushing it around, I added some white Crayola slick stix to soften it in the center.

 

The paper I used was a little too thin—next time I would use a true watercolor paper so it didn’t buckle. I considered ironing the page, but was afraid that the I would lose the design and it would bleed off like when you iron the wax out of batik. I did hurry the drying along with a blowdryer, which helped flatten it a bit.

Once the background was dry, I added a variety of stenciled images with a Faber-Castell white PITT pen. The effect was soft and watery, which was just what I wanted. I used the chakra pocket stencils, mini damask, the edge of the Balzer deco doily stencil and sections of the garden gate.

 

Next, I “auditioned” the orange crackle heart on the page to see if I liked it, and to see where I wanted to glue it. After deciding on placement, I added some brown chalk ink to the heart edges to age it, and smeared a bit lightly over the stencil to add to the aging and enhance the crackle. I also tore the background page out of the spiral journal, trimmed the torn edge away and added a strip of solid orange paper on the side.

A favorite Rumi quote seemed to be just the right words for the page.  After I selected the types sizes and fonts I wanted, I printed the Rumi quote out on Avery clear mailing labels and applied them to my page.

My thought for Valentine’s Day is that everyone should celebrate self-love, and not be afraid to chase their dream, go after what they love, and follow the little voice in their head that is whispering the way.