Happy Valentine Day aka Happy Friday the Thirteenth

Or Valentines and Puffy Hearts...
Before I start, I wanted to say sorry for not posting for a week. We had to attend a few events to celebrate the life of The Senior Sports Fan, who left us a few weeks ago. Some of these events were in Oregon which as you know is not where we live right now. Traveling makes it hard to get your swaps done, let alone to update your blog with clever reportage and cool photos, though I had all of the equipment with me. The mood just wasn't there.

I'm sure you understand.

Now let's start talking about the photos for today. First up are the Valentine Post Cards for the swap of the same name on the TreasureArtTrends Yahoo Group. OK, so it was my idea. A bunch of us signed up to send Valentine Post Cards to three others in the group.

You might notice that I've got photos of four post cards here. I just had to make one for The Sports Fan's mom, Stamper Mom.

When I started playing around in the paper arts, she enabled me big time by letting me play in her studio, using up all the paper and other supplies I wanted to use. Wow, that was so incredibly generous, wasn't it? I honestly doubt that I could do that. I've got too many treasures hidden away that I can't even bear to use myself! Yes, I'm a brat. ;-))

So what enabled these cards was a Valentine kit I bought from my pal Keri's shop, TreasureArtTrends. Yes, it is connected to the group as the shop owners own the group too, though I don't think that they mention their shop enough on the group. This was a wonderful assortment of coordinated Basic Grey papers and embellishments in cardstock and chipboard, buttons and brads, plus rub-ons, ribbons, and trims. I chose to use a different ribbon that I found at The Creative Quest here in Glendale, AZ. I added some pink jewels from my stash as well as some pink polyester flowers I bought on Ebay. I love it when I get to use my Crop-A-Dile Big Bite. I got to use both size holes, the 3/16" for the ribbon and the 1/8" for the brads. The basis of the cards was thin book board with coordinating papers from a 6" square paper block Xyroned onto each side. I make the fronts first when I make postcards so that I can cover up the backs of any brads or stuff that I might use that would look ugly on the other side.

Making the cards was like being in a playground just having fun.

Another project that recently shipped out was puffy hearts that were inspired by an article in Cloth, Paper, Scissors. But really, all of the major mixed media mags have had puffy hearts in them. Knowing that I had bunches of beads and some grey velveteen on hand, I dove into making hearts. I cut them out freehand from the velveteen and then used them as the pattern to cut the backs from a dark red satin lining remnant.

Putting the beads on was the fun part. I used some silk embroidery thread and some Gutterman #30 or #40 embroidery thread doubled. I also tried using some heavy rayon embroidery thread that was nice and slippery. The big thing was to make sure that the needle went through the beads I wanted to use, of course. I used some scraps of the lining fabric to cut small rectangles on which to place larger pearlized beads. This is probably my least favorite.

I really like the ones with the assorted beads. I just used whatever came out as long as it was not exactly the same as one of the nearby beads. Then I stitched the hearts together and stuffed them with snipped up leftovers of batting that were sitting around. I like the ones with embroidery thread around the edges on the bottom of the photo. The larger of the two (on the right, below) has an embellishment of twisted pink silky net fabric.