#1 Fan

Happy Valentine's Day to all you fellow creativity enthusiasts. Hope you're having a fan-tastic day of love!

February Bulletin 2019

Poetry, posies, and cupids

Cardboard Hearts

Snip, snip--time to make some valentines! These cardboard templates have been a part of every crafty valentine session since I was little. With each passing year there are more scribbles around their edges from veering pens and pencils. That hand template, which is a tracing of my 7-year-old hand, attests to their longevity. I love making people's days through the papery pink and red goodness of this holiday.

Plume Bobbin Pen

Ooolala, this is an ideal pen with which to write a love letter! It is crafted of a re-purposed bobbin from a loom (my textile-loving heart just fluttered) and a glamorous ostrich feather. I bought it at the MVTM.

February Bulletin 2018

Flirty florals, Fauvism, and a heart overflowing with creative joy

A Tangled Web

 Lucy Maud Montgomery's A Tangled Web, published 1931, is a novel about two intertwined founding families, and the drama of inheritance and romance. It is full of Montgomery's witty, descriptive observations.

You're a Gem

I've been playing around with jewel tones and February's amethyst.

Love Laughs at Locksmiths

I bought this vintage handkerchief for $2 at a vintage clothing store for it's romantic, whimsical illustrations. It's probably from the 1950s. I did a little research about the verse and discovered that it is a proverb meaning love will find a way. It is derived from Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, "Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast/ Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last."

Happy Valentine's Day!

Spread Love

This adorable hand-stamped knife is by Infinite Purpose Jewelry.

Honey

Here's a little valentine for the bees that help bring the flowers about for your loved ones!

Lipstick Handkerchief

I found this embroidered handkerchief, likely from the 1950s, at a garage sale. I guess it exists so as not to destroy a white handkerchief with lipstick!

Fête Galante

Pilgrimage to Cythera by Jean-Antoine Watteau--1718--oil on canvas 

February Bulletin 2017

Dainty details and dreams, admiration and affection

Smooch

My Smooch design is up for voting in Spoonflower's Ditsy Mistletoe challenge!

Pamela

I'm currently reading this 1740 epistolary novel, Pamela, by Samuel Richardson. Richardson (1689--1761) was a printer in London, and also wrote letter writing manuals instructing readers on how to write and behave properly. One of the letters in the manual sparked the plot of Pamela, the first classic English romantic novel. Pamela is told through a series of letters from Pamela, a beautiful  and godly servant girl, to her parents, beginning with her master's attempts to seduce her. According to this documentary by the fabulous historian Lucy Worsley, which goes into more detail about the success of the novel, Richardson was one of Jane Austen's favourite authors, and Pamela inspired her writing as well as the writing of other love novels.

Love Letters to Strangers

This TED Talk is heart-warming.

Heart of the Country

Who's noticed that Canada's Capital is shaped like a heart?

Fingerprints Collection

Spoonflower and StoryPatches have teamed up for June's design challenge. My Fingerprints design is available for voting in their Family Tree Coordinates Challenge, in celebration of family life! My Fingerprints collection is inspired by the uniqueness of fingerprints and is composed of the following designs: Emblems of Nobility

Bouquets of Time

Letters of Love

and Hearts of Flesh

Love Lock

This photo was taken by my inspiring friend and sister in Christ, Anni.
"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."
Ephesians 3:16-21

Mother Daughter

Happy Mother's Day to all you multitasking ladies out there!