Mixed Media Valentines

Every year I look forward to the Shake Rag Alley Valentine Sale.

I absolutely love making valentines for this event. Gives me the perfect excuse to haul out ALL of my supplies and play with EVERY technique I can think of. 

Here are are few of my mixed media cards with lots of layering. I use just about any sort of scrap from my stash of materials - fabric paper, muslin that I have hand stamped and colored with acrylic paints, collaged papers, old book pages, hand-made paper, package wrap...basically whatever I find in the studio that just looks great. Oh yeah, and stitching.

These two are samples of a very clean, simple design I like to do. It's so fun and easy to discover a terrific looking heart in just about any piece of fabric paper, cut it out and hand sew on an interesting old rusted washer or a bent wire metal shape. Glue the heart onto some nice paper backing, then glue that to the front of a card and the effect is quite elegant.

Art Charm Jewelry

I've been busy making little Art Charms from various junk. Here's some of what I've come up with.

The dangles on these earrings started out as a pair of semi-translucent plastic beads or buttons (not sure which) that I had in a box of buttons and old jewelry I picked up somewhere. I decoupaged them and used a couple of washes of acrylic paint. Thought they were a bit bulky for a bracelet, so added a few beads and made them into earrings. I originally intended to hang the dangles from a chain instead of a beaded wire so I could call them my Ball and Chain Earrings, but the beads are these very nice aged metal that just seemed right.

This is a mismatched pair of dangle earrings made from hairpins. I was trying out a few different designs. I think I like the longer one on the left best. The other one just doesn't want to hang as nicely.

And here's a completed charm bracelet made from a bunch of Art Charms, most of which were shown in an earlier post. The chain, like much of my raw materials, was a thrift store find. Added some buttons and wooden beads to kind of pull the whole thing together. I see many charm bracelets with widely spaced charms. Great for appreciating each individual charm, but not surprisingly, I go for the wild and totally mixed-up chunky look.