I dug threw my box of frames out in the garage and found 3 good size frames that were brown, dusty and in need of some good TLC (always my favorite part!) and gave them each a good coat of black paint. While digging around in the garage I also came across some square, glass coasters that were intended to be Christmas presents 4 years ago (they're those coasters that have a square slot for a picture in the middle) but realized how lame of a gift that would have been and shoved them in a box. As I was looking at my freshly painted frames and my cobwebbed coasters a lightbulb went off in my head and these were born...
The first one...Love me Tender
To do this project I slid a piece of valentine scrapbook paper I picked up at Michaels (5 sheets at .39 a sheet-only ended up using 3 of the sheets) behind the glass in the frame. Next I printed off the letters I wanted in black vinyl (that I had left over from St. George) on my cricut and put them onto a 2x2 square of pink cardstock that I had. I slid the cardstock into the picture slot in the coaster and then super glued the coaster onto the frame. I love how the coasters give the frame dimension and texture.
The second one...Save the Date
Same idea with the coasters and the vinyl except I was running out of vinyl so I used black construction paper to print out the bottom line and taped each letter on individually. Pain. In. The. Butt. Next time I will fork out the money and buy more vinyl. :)
The last one...Be My Valentine. On this one I added a little "bling" to the V and the E just cause I love me some bling.
About a week after I made those frames I found these wood candlestick holders at DI for .50 each so I grabbed all 5 that they had and used 3 to make these jars.This was the look I was going for at Christmas with my JOY jars that I filled with peppermints but never could find the wood candlesticks for less than $3 a piece. I actually yelped in the store when I saw them and may or may not have politely shoved a lady out of the way to grab them.
The jars I got for $1.50 a piece at Hobby Lobby (been waiting 2 MONTHS for them to go on sale AND be in stock) and brought all my new babies home and sprayed them black-the lids on the jars were silver. I filled them with pink and white taffy candy and printed XOX on red vinyl I had. I didn't love the tops of them plain so when I saw I had big red roses in my flower stash I threw them on top and called it a day!
Well it was a day until my BF called and said, "hey do you want to be crafty today?"...so I picked up a roll of pink and white crepe paper and some Styrofoam balls ($3 for a pack of 6 at micheals w/ a %40 off coupon) and headed over to her house with some hot glue and scissors and spent hours and hours and hours and hours making tissue paper kissing balls from HERE.
My pink one I rolled the paper really tight so there are lots more "roses" on it than the white.
See...lots bigger. bigger=less time=less frustration=not wanting to throw craft at your crying child because you're neglecting to feed them lunch.
So here's our lovey dovey mantle...
I thought Bobby might feel a little left out of the decorating so I finally gave in when he *begged* to cut these wood blocks for me. :)
I then lightly spray painted them black, roughed them up a little with sandpaper, mod-podged some scrapbook paper on (leftover from the frames) printed the letters and hearts onto vinyl and put them on the blocks. I found some little pink jewels in my bling bag so hot glued one onto the end of each letter and then hung them up with some ribbon and tied them onto a curtain rod (that we had from our last apartment) and nailed it into the wall above the couch. (So that it can be a year round thing I'll use the other side of the blocks to spell out family or something else livingroomish.)
Another awesome craft Mindy wanted to do was this heart felt wreath she found on THIS blog.
This one actually took less time than the kissing balls, but used SO much felt!
Like literally 20 times this stack.
JoAnn's was all out of the heart wreaths when we went so we bought a huge rectangle piece of Styrofoam and Bobby was nice enough to cut us each a heart shape!
I like how it turned out in the end, but wish I would have done one solid color instead of the 3 I did. Red on the outside, hot pink in the middle and light pink in the center.
My mom and Alisa get together to craft and I hate being left out :( so it's so nice having a friend her that enjoys doing crafts as much as I do!
I had my hurricane vase starring out at me from my craft box looking so sad and lonely so I thought I'd give her a home on top of the TV. (see having a TV from 1990 comes in handy sometimes! ha ha not really that old but it feels like it!)
It's says Sweet Talk because there are cinnamon lips on the bottom of the vase and sweet taffy candy with valentine sayings on top of them! Stick in a candle from last year and everybody has a nice comfy home for the holiday.
I always love to frame pictures of the kids from the past holiday. It's fun to see how much they've changed!
So if you don't know my mom you're missing out. She is one of the most crafty, creative, intelligent people I know...and that's in her spare time. She has a wonderfully inspiring blog HERE where she shows off-humbly of course-her mad skillz in the card-making/scrapbooking world. Every holiday she sends us some of her gorgeous hand-made cards so this year I wanted a place to show them off. And so the Love Tree was born.
The "tree" is actually a lantern holder that sits on the dresser in our bedroom (it holds 5 little candle lanterns on each "branch") that we got as a souvenir while on our honeymoon. The Clothespins are from the Christmas card holder I had from Christmas. I spray painted each clothespin red (I always have on hand red, white and black spray paint. It's just as much a staple in this house as milk and cheese) and then cut a piece of valentine scrapbook paper (leftover from my frames) and mod podged them onto the front square covering the pictures that used to be snowmen, santa clause, etc.
The Christmas card holder came with 12 clothespins so I used 5 to hold the 5 cards I have from my mom like the one I just got in the mail yesterday...
...this one that is actually an anniversary card but I LOVE it and it's pink and there's kissing so it works right?!
And then I used the other 7 clothespins and snapped the hearts off of a package of heart picks I found at the dollar store and hot glued them over the Christmas pics just to add in some filler.
And there you have it!
So it's a good thing I had almost everything done and up by mid Jan because these 2 (and Bobby and I) have been sick-between the four of us-for 4 weeks now! Tyler's had it the worse with croup, an ear infection and now a massive rash all over his body. Poor guy's birthday's on Thur so we're hoping he's better by then! But this is how they spent most of Jan and all of Feb so far...
...on the couch watching movies. He is dying to get outside and play but with the next door neighbor having RSV I'm doing all I can just to keep them with the illnesses they have now!
Hopefully it'll at least put a smile on their faces when they wake up in the morning to see all that Cupid has in store for them!
Have a Happy Valentines Day!!!