For those in the KY area I’m teaching a stamping card class this month at Raintree Gallery in Versailles, it’s near the bypass to Frankfort at 240B Crossfield Drive, Versailles, KY 40383. They have a nice large class room space.

Class this month is for Valentine and Love cards on Sat. Jan 19th, there is a 10-12 time OR a 1-3 time, $15 for 4 cards (as usual all you need to bring is scissors, bone folder and adhesive). Cut off date to sign up is one week before the class, space is limited.

Please let me know if you have any questions and if you’re interested in signing up please call the gallery at 859-873-8822

-Heather

I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last post. The year has hardly begun and already it’s been rough. I’ve had alot of health issues and almost two weeks ago I unexpectedly lost my Grandfather (which has been terribly hard for the whole family).

But I’ve been trying to keep busy, mostly by redoing my work space. I’m almost done, it looks so great and functions so much better than before, I feel so organized! I’ll post before and after pics soon.

In the meantime here’s a few collages I’ve made recently with the thought of Valentine’s Day and love. I took white chipboard and cut out a heart shape (aprox. 5 1/2″ square) and adhered some vintage music sheet and patterned papers that I’d whitewashed and “sponged” with painted bubble wrap. I then added German paper scrap birds, vintage text, ribbons, sewed on buttons, etc. I punched holes at the top and added eyelets and wrapped cream wire for hangers. I think they turned out really pretty, they have a very shabby chic look to them. I love the blue one so much I might even keep it for myself:) The other two are currently for sale in my Etsy Shop.

So, I love old buttons and have used some in soldered jewelry but was wanting to making something “more” with them. I remembered a piece I saw awhile ago from the great Rebbecca Sower and also some pieces I’ve seen on Etsy and I was inspired to make this piece. I had some extra burlap from another project and loads of vintage white buttons so I drew a heart onto the burlap and stitched on all the buttons filling in the heart. And since I love adding little cut out words to just about everything I added the word “love” to one of the buttons. I bought an embroidery hoop and stained it with some wood stain (I have some vintage hoops packed away some place from my cross stitch days and need to find them, they’d be great in a piece like this) and then I put the burlap in the hoop, trimmed it down and glued it to the back. I think it turned out really lovely.

One of my favorite companies for collage supplies is Artchix Studio, you can check out their website here:

http://www.artchixstudio.com

and the owner Helga has a wonderful blog as well: http://www.myartisticlife.typepad.com/ where she has art challenges and her current one is a Paris theme so I thought I’d post one of  soldered collage pendants for this challenge. If you have a blog you might like to participate as well, see her blog for more info.

I love Paris as a theme and for this piece I used a page from a vintage French text book for the background and layered on top an image of the Eiffel Tower on black cardstock and then added an image a couple in love and the word “love” cut from a vintage book. I also stamped a postage cancellation onto the front piece of glass itself using Staz-On ink. The Eiffel Tower and couple images are both from Artchix collage sheets.

Here’s some more soldered collage jewelry for Valentine’s Day.

I love old movies and I really LOVE Cary Grant, he’s one of my all time favorite actors so I thought he’d make a great pendant. I used scrapbook paper for the background it has hearts and word all over, added a wonderful pic of Cary and I also cut out the words “Heart Throb” from an old dictionary.

This next one features an image of a sweet couple that I punched out in a heart shape over old book paper and I stamped the words “Key to My Heart”. The edged are done with scalloped soldering and a tiny key dangles from the bottom.

Made a couple of collage art Valentine cards today.

The first one is an image of a vintage couple, I mounted them on scallop edged black paper to look more like the old photos that have that type of edge, added some vintage lace and a pink paper heart with the word “love” cut from an old book. The background is vintage music paper that’s been stitched onto cardstock on my sewing machine and then mounted onto a pink card. There is also an old looking key tied with pink rick rack ribbon. The inside of the cards says “You hold the key to my HEART”

The next one is another of my felt owls (I’ve done other cards and ATC’s with him) sitting on a stamped branch, he’s also on vintage music paper surrounded by falling pink stamped hearts that’s stitched onto cardstock and mounted on a pink card. The outside says “Whooo Loves You” and the inside says “I do!”.

All stamps used are by Close To My Heart