Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine 2014

Warm wishes from me to you on Valentine’s Day! It’s blustery and snowy here.

I’m hoping to get out and take some pictures of the storm and post them later on. But for now, I’m staying cozy inside, enjoying the morning with my daughter, my puppy and my coffee. Husband will be home after the snow settles down.

Chair, snowed in

I’ve ventured out into the yard. The snow is up to my knees, but I found it hard to take pictures that conveyed just how much snow we have here.

No Picnic Today

The picnic table makes a good measurement table too.

Here’s a  sort of  before and after picture set:

Before the Winter

During Winter

Now I still have a few more Valentines to tend to….

Valentines in Progress

I doubt that these will get into the mailbox today…but at least they will be done soon.

Then there will be time to relax with puppy….

Exhausted after romping in the snow

February 14, 2013

Sending…

A Valentine for you.

And another one.

And one more…

Best wishes to you on Valentine’s Day.

Almost February 14

Flares

This past Christmas season I received far fewer holiday cards than in previous years. It seemed to me that the December 13 Newtown tragedy created a wound so deep in our collective psyche that sending out “Merry Christmas” cards seemed dissonant with the moment. I sent out holiday cards. It actually felt hard to send them out, as my heart was full of sadness for the Sandy Hook families. But I have a conviction that it is important to send out messages of caring, so, rather than wishing people a merry Christmas, I sent them wishes of love in the coming year.

Now Valentine’s Day is coming and I have another opportunity let people know that I am thinking of them.  On Valentine’s Day I will post a Valentine for you who care to look at my blog.  To make the Valentine I first filled a 3o inch by 40 inch template with multicolored flares in Adobe Illustrator (see picture above.)

30′ x 40″

I emailed the Illustrator file to Staples and they printed out this poster…there’s a sale this month so this print cost only $18.00. I was blown away by the quality of the print. The color and detail were so superior to anything that my home printer could do that I will never waste my time printing this sort of thing at home again. Besides, I could never do large sizes, and the large size was sooo much fun to get.

flares and Bill’s pencil box

As an aside, as I was working on this project my husband gave me this pencil box, which he had decorated. We had been working completely independently of each other, so I was taken by the similarity of our imagery. But I digress…

Slicing the image

Next I started cutting up the image by scoring and tearing. I didn’t much like the way the edges looked so….

…the edges got some gold guilding with Winsor and Newton gold ink. I love this product.

Okay…that’s all I’m going to give away about this project before Valentine’s Day. Check back on the fourteenth, and let me send some love your way.

Valentines, Crayoned

I like sending out Valentines. This year I wanted use crayons to draw out hearts.

When I was thinking about how I wanted to make my valentines I knew that what I wanted to do was to do something by hand, and to make something to share that I thought was beautiful and fun. I like crayon drawings, especially my own crayon drawings. I have been drawing hearts and coloring them in all day long today.

I didn’t anticipate that it would take so long to draw the cards. But each card seemed to take longer than the one before, as I happily laid down color after color. Hot magenta and cerulean are the colors that got the most play.

Valentines in progress

Each Valentine card is postcard size, 3 1/2′ x 5 1/2″. I drew them on a large sheet of paper so that I could draw all the way to the edges, which always looks better to me. Also, I liked that bits of each drawing shared some overflow colors with each card that it was surrounded by.

Valentines Sheet.waiting to be cut apart

They are all done now…I have 1 hour and 10 minutes before it is officially Valentines Day. Which means that my Aunt Angela, my mother, everyone else who is far away, will be getting their cards late.

Late or not….

A Valentine for You

…here’s wishing you a Happy Valentine’s Day!!!