More Homemade Valentines: Quilled Hearts and Flowers

For those of you more interested in making pretty Valentines with your kids than the humorous bodily-noises variety I featured in yesterday's post (here), I bring you a technique that's:

• relatively easy (though a tad time-consuming),
• relaxing (a good project for while you watch TV or chat with friends/family),
• versatile,
• inexpensive, and
• impressive-looking

It also goes well with chocolate! What more can you ask for?

(I apologize for the blurry photo above. It was the only one I had of a quilled Valentine I made for a friend last year. I nearly always forget to photograph our Valentines...)

Although I'd fooled around with quilled pictures as a kid, it was an article on breathtakingly beautiful quilled Valentines in a February issue of  Martha Stewart Living a few years back that sparked my interest in trying it again. You can still find step-by-step descriptions of the how-to, as well as suggestions for an assortment of quilled Valentine crafts on her website here.

I'm not going to repeat the full how-to since I don't think I could do it better than Martha, but I'll outline the materials and basic steps I used to make the Valentine above. Then you can make your own version - one of the great things about this craft is that you don't have to be a confident artist to come up with your own lovely designs or make something that looks remarkably polished.

Materials and Tools

• Paper To make the Valentine above, I cut strips from bright copier paper and lightweight cardstock. (You can purchase special strips in different widths intended for quilling, but they tend to be expensive. Since uniformity is not crucial for this project, I'd go cheap.) You'll also need a piece of heavyweight cardstock or a blank card for the background. If you don't have colored paper, don't fret: white-on-white quilling looks elegant.
• Paper cutter Or a ruler and steady hand to make your strips. (Or quilling paper already in strips.)
• Scissors For adjusting length and fringing. It's nice to have decorative scissors that scallop the edge before you fringe, but they're not essential
• Glue Ordinary white glue is perfect. (I apply it sparingly with a toothpick.) A glue stick can work too, but may not hold some of the heavier blossoms.
• Curling tool You can buy commercial quilling tools (see here), but a skewer or skinny knitting needle works pretty well too. (Inna Dorman on her interesting kids and craft blog Inna's Creations  also has instructions for making a simple but effective quilling tool here.)
• Tweezers (optional) Help keep glue off your fingers and creations, but not essential unless you're working very small.

Steps

1. Make a heart "frame" I used my paper cutter to make a long strip of 1/4" cardstock, folded it roughly in half and then curled the loose ends toward each other, glued them together, and bent them into a loose heart shape. I applied glue to the edges with a toothpick and arranged the heart on my blank card. (I deliberately made mine assymetrical, but you could use a heart template to make yours more perfect if you prefer.) Hold down for a minute or so until the glue sets up.
2. Make an assortment of fringed flowers These will look kind of like daisies or asters. Cut strips of different colored papers in an assortment of wider widths. (Mine varied from about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch.) I didn't bother to scallop mine, but you can. I speed up the fringing by first folding the strips and cutting through 4 layers at a time. Be careful not to cut all the way through! Roll the strips into a coil and then bend and ruffle the "petals." I used tight coils for the centers, but loose coils work too.
3. Make some bell flowers The Martha site has step-by-step instructions, but basically you make a tight coil and poke in the middles, adjusting until you have a smooth "cup."
4. Make a few other shape flowers I did some iris-like flowers from quilled teardrop shapes. Martha shows how, plus she has instructions for roses, which I didn't use here but have incorporated in other cards. (They're a bit more fiddly, especially for beginners or young kids.)
5. Arrange the flowers within the frame I do this first to make sure I've got the space reasonably full but not overcrowded.
6. Make stems and leaves No firm right or wrong way to do this. I mostly bent and loosely curled narrow green strips for the stems. Teardrops make nice leaves. Try varying sizes, with smaller leaves toward the ends of stems. Also, varied shades of green can look attractive
7. Glue everything in place It takes a little time for the heavier flowers to "stick."

Obviously, these do not mail well in a regular envelope...

If you enjoy this craft and want more ideas for projects, here are a couple of good sites for inspiration and tips:

• Ann Martin's blog All Things Paper (while you're there, check out  her beautiful quilled marriage certificates)
• Inna's Creations (which I mentioned above) Lots of ideas for "flat" quilled projects for both kids and adults (see here) and also cool 3-D projects (see here) to try once you master the basics.
• And if you really want to see how these techniques can be used for real art, check out the work of master quiller Yuliya Brodskaya here and here. Her stuff just blows my mind.

Homemade Valentines (of the Borderline Inappropriate Sort that Boys Might Be Willing to Make)

Valentine for his classmates. By my son at age 7

The Valentine above almost got my son kicked out of school.

Long time readers of my blog as well as my unfortunate offspring will know that I have rather rigid rules for school Valentines. (See this previous post for example.)

• First, you must give Valentines to ALL your classmates so as to avoid hurt feelings.
• Second, and this is the even more important one: no crap TV character ones from Walmart. You have to make your own.

These rules resulted in my children creating exquisite works of art that I will treasure forever.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA!

Okay. The truth. What they resulted in was a bunch of crap "homemade" Valentines. Usually wonky construction paper "hearts" slathered with strange assortments of stickers, stained with tears shed during the inevitable frustration tantrums, and finished with lollipops taped to the front obscuring their signatures. If they bothered to sign them. But at least the cards didn't have TV characters on them...

That was until I discovered the six secrets to getting boys involved in public declarations of love (or at least sort-of-liking).

1. Let them use normally off-limits equipment in my studio, like the fragile light table or dangerous xacto knives
2. Encourage them to incorporate their current passionate interests
3. Assist with the boring parts like signing their names, putting the cards in envelopes, and addressing them (by "assist" I mean "do it for them")
4. Incentivize frequently with samples of the candy included with the cards
5. Maintain low quality standards
6. Have them write love poems

The first five secrets I figured out on my own. The last one, though, is thanks to their wonderful kindergarten teacher, Ms. Frey. She introduced them to classics of love poetry like:

"I love you,
I love you,
I love you divine.
Please give me your bubble gum.
You're sitting on mine."

The Valentine featured here took my fine-motor challenged child hours and hours to make. Not to mention the ages he spent creating the verse. In the process:

1. I let him use my light table (which is how the writing is more or less in a straight line). Also I let him use the xacto knife to slice a piece of scratch paper to shreds, even though that had nothing to do with his project.
2. I let him incorporate his current and longstanding interest in loud burping.
3. I allowed him to sign his name only once and then photocopied it. And I did all the stuffing and addressing.
4. I fed him lots of lollipops while he worked. Lots.
5. I mentioned the lack of rhyme in his rhyming verse and the half-finished border around the heart only once and didn't say another word when he insisted he was done.
6. I laughed - genuinely - at his funny poem and drawing. Actually I rather liked the absence of the expected rhyme. It was another little touch of humor (though I'm not certain it was intentional).

Then I sent him off to school with his packet of Valentines. Where the room mother at the class party saw his card and then expressed her shock at its inappropriate "potty" humor and attitude toward females to the longterm substitute (the original, beloved teacher had just started a sabbatical). Where the new teacher then confiscated all my son's Valentines. Where my son then dissolved in tears but fortunately waited until he was outside the school to call the teacher many, many mean names of the sort that might get a kid kicked out of school.

We actually resolved the incident amicably (after I had my own temper tantrum in front of my husband). The teacher apologized and let Eric distribute his cards another day, and they were great buds the rest of the year. And I had a pleasant chat with the room mother (who obviously had no sons of her own), and although we were not exactly best buds after that, well, we weren't best buds before either.

On second thought, maybe you should just to a run to Walmart for some TV character Valentines after all. But don't forget the extra lollipops. You'll still need them for the signing and addressing part. (Though perhaps you prefer high quality dark chocolate like I do.)

P.S. This is my favorite Valentine's Day book. All my kids loved it too, even though there is absolutely no mention of farting or burping in the whole story.

Happy Valentine's Day!

When I was a kid, my favorite part of Valentine's Day was not candy, getting tons of mail, or finding out that someone I liked liked me back (though of course I loved all those things), but making my Valentines. I spent weeks before the big day dreaming up different designs and then troubleshooting construction problems (my Valentines always had some complicated paper engineering thing going on, with windows or doors that locked with a lollipop stick, folded paper springs that made hearts pop out when someone opened the card, or other pop-up features). And then there was the making phase, parked at the kitchen table with my mom and sisters and piles of construction paper, doilies, and gobs of old-fashioned paste.  I have conveniently forgotten the temper tantrums that traditionally accompanied my over-reaching projects.

The happy memories are no doubt the reason I often spent every February 13th when my kids were young once more parked at the kitchen table with mounds of craft supplies trying to coax my craft-indifferent sons to make their own Valentines too (and then staying up late finishing them up when the boys abandoned the project midcourse and I couldn't bear to think about some poor classmate being left out).

Fortunately for me, my daughter was a different story. She liked to make things too. And still does to my everlasting delight.

The little matchbox Valentines she made in first grade remain one of my all time favorite Valentine projects. (The little love bugs inside were NOT my favorite - too fiddly for little hands.) These Valentines were also a favorite of my middle son's, because not only did he do something similar, albeit simpler:

I let him keep the giant ziplock bag full of the matches we dumped out of the sixty-some little matchboxes! Which was a LOT of matches.

He spent the next zillion summers constructing elaborate if rather wobbly structures from the matches and glue and then setting them alight (under adult supervision, in the driveway, on low wind days with a bucket of water handy, but still). I am a terrible mother obviously.

These are very simple Valentines to make, possible to do at the last minute if you have a spare box of matches handy. Simply cut a paper strip long enough to wrap around the box, draw a design on the front (my daughter designed four different buildings - the flower shop and house shown at the top of this post, and I think a school and a library, but I guess I didn't save samples of them), and then glue it in place. For mass production purposes, I pasted up the four designs on a single piece of paper and photocopied them, and then my daughter cut out the strips and glued them around the boxes -- but one of kind designs work too.

I recommend putting some heart stickers, a sweet note or a little candy inside (as my son did) rather than spending a bazillion hours gluing miniature googly eyes and punched heart "wings" onto glass gems. Fewer frustration tantrums for everyone that way.

I'll close with a photo of my pug, Koko, who is celebrating her 11th birthday today. In style.

Belated - but not departed!

Happy Valentine's Day, belatedly! And even more importantly, a belated but no less sincere and gigantic thank you to Roz for giving me this great award! It made my day - and the last couple weeks too. I've been swamped with work, travel (for pleasure and work), kid stuff, snow days, and now a miserable virus too (probably inevitable after spending a full day with a class of snuffling kindergartners plus about 7 hours on planes at the beginning of the week, not to mention all the time I've spent standing in snow and slush this week, scraping and chipping to clear paths and vehicles).

Anyhow, to pass on the award, here are the details:
1. Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make me think and/or make my day.
2. Acknowledge the post of the award giver.
3. Display the “You Make my Day Award” logo
4. Tell the award winners that they have won by commenting on their blogs with the news.

It's hard to pick just five (kind of like choosing just five chocolates from the mega-assortment box), so I'm glad I don't have to count Roz's excellent blog as one of them (but make sure you check it out too, if you haven't already, especially if like me you adore fabric illustration). Anyhow, here are five blogs that spark my muse, all on different subject matter:

1. Julie Stiegemeyer of Jottings and Such (Julie introduced me to blogging and is the author of my Cheep books as well as tons of other charming children's books, and an incredibly dear friend and all around kind person).

2. Amy Karol of the much-read craft/mothering/interesting stuff blog Angry Chicken and author of the useful book Break-the-Rules Sewing. She's probably already received this award a zillion times, but it is one of my favorite blogs.

3. Danny Evans of the father-parenting blog, Dad Gone Mad. I recently discovered this blog, and I've been completely enjoying his male take on little people and parenting adventures. Warning for those with sensitive ears (eyes?) - he's a master of the irreverent phrase and creative use of four-letter words.

4. Kitty Griffin of Chocolate Ferrets and Writing for Kids which is a brand new blog (so it doesn't have many entries yet). Kitty is an amazing children's book writer (for all ages) as well as a screenwriter and some-time writing instructor in the MFA program in writing for kids at Chatham College in Pittsburgh. She's an outstanding teacher and mentor -- and she should consider this a gentle nag to post more! We want more! (says the, um, procrastinator/overwhelmed person who hasn't posted in more than 2 weeks....)

5. Susan vanHecke who's the talented author of the folktale I'm currently illustrating. I just discovered her blog recently too (I'm just plain embarrassed to say it didn't occur to me to look her up when I started working on her book), and I've really been enjoying it.

I also owe Susan a big apology (and some chocolate too) because I'm late with the art for her book (but I'm working hard on it! Really! It's just very complex and detailed!), so the pub date will have to be pushed back. I've been late with artwork before - I'm still new enough to book illustration that it's hard for me to gauge how much time I need - but this is the first time (and I hope only time) I've been so late that I screwed up a pub date. I feel terrible - but that just means I'll have to make sure the final art is as near to perfect as I can get it and thus worth the wait.

Okay, back to the drawing table. Well, to the kitchen table, where the sewing machine is parked and calling to me, snuffly nose and all.