Valentines

As usual, there is a lot of crafty stuff going on in our house these days. The last few weeks have been filled with sewing and letterpressing, so stay tuned for posts about these projects soon. In the meantime, we're long overdue for pictures of Valentine's Day craftiness. Still using leftover paper from our wedding stationery, I made Valentines cards to send out to the family. The first few cards were made at a crafty night, I was so excited to be invited by a former colleague. It was a great group of women, there was lots of gabbing and crafty fun.

Our cards were inspired by others I've seen that combine sewing and paper.

After cutting and folding the card, I cut a heart from the card. Then I glued a piece of scrapbook paper to the inside of the card, and sewed around the outside of the heart. I used all six strands of the embroidery floss and a needle. Pretty simple, and only moderately time consuming.

After sewn, the inside of the card looks pretty messy. I cut another piece of card paper and glued it to the inside, hiding the unsightly bits.

We made seven cards, but one had already been hand delivered before their photo session.

The weekend of Valentine's Day, Mr went to Colorado to see a pair of Government Mule shows in Denver. While he was away, we had a delightful little snow. It was only about two inches, I woke up to prettiness, and by noon it had melted.

Mr came home to a sweet treat and a little handmade gift. Staying true to the holiday, I made Red Velvet cupcakes (super yum!). After reading many recipes online, I chose the one from McCormick, and it was so good. We are still talking about how tasty those cupcakes were. The cupcakes sunk a little in the middles, I'm sure this was some fault of the baker, but I thought it was good because it made more room for the frosting.

The Valentine present for Mr was inspired by a heart knot I saw on the web. She uses Mizuhiki cord to make the heart, but when I saw this I had an aha moment because we have a whole drawer full of old guitar strings.

Six weeks have passed since I made this little heart, but I still remember this as a project of endless frustration. It was truly a lesson in patience. There was wire everywhere, never cooperating. I actually had to walk away and take a break from it for a few hours. I do not recommend trying to recreate what I've done here. At any rate, I used the strings to make the heart knot, and I also used the smallest string (Mr tells me this is the high E) to twist and secure it all together, with needle nose pliers.

Hours later, when I got everything wrangled into shape, I trimmed off the crazy ends and was done.

In the end it was worth the agony because Mr loved it.