Valentine Hearts and Flowers

I was looking around the house this week for hearts to photograph for Valentine's day and discovered that I don't actually have that many. So it was an ideal excuse for some hearty crafting. I'd been running a bit low on creative inspiration recently, but when I received my beautiful Giveaway heart from Lilly Cottage I just knew I wanted to try something similar.

I bought these two tin hearts originally to hang in my kitchen, at the time I had planned a duck-egg colour scheme, but subsequently decided it needs some warmer colours, so the hearts were consigned to a drawer. Now I had an idea for them - first a coat of paint in deeper tones.

Then flowers, lace, buttons, jewels and a very pleasant hour spent arranging and glueing transformed them into this...

and this...

I really enjoyed making these, I wish I had some more of the tin hearts, I'd like to make some in other colours, but they were bought on holiday last year, I haven't seen any around here.

On my trip to the craft shop last week I bought a pack of foam hearts thinking I could surely do something pretty with them. First, I made this hanging heart pocket. Backed in one of my favourite rose fabrics with the pocket from vintage lace, finished with more lace, ribbon and mother-of-pearl buttons.

It can be filled with whatever trinkets take my fancy and I can change them around, for now I have tucked in a couple of cards and a pink fabric rose. I'm so pleased with the result, I think I'm going to be making a few more of these.

This pink and red heart was made up as a picture frame.

I used a scrapbooking paper with a lovely rose design, plus some pink flowers to decorate and red and pink ribbons to finish. A vintage postcard provided the picture (I photocopied it as I couldn't bear to cut it up).

Lastly I made this smaller heart by shaping a length of paper-covered wire, more flowers, lace and buttons.

Now whilst I do a fair bit of crafting, mainly it's items for sale and sometimes it can become a bit of a chore making the same things over and over again. These were made for no other reason than the pure pleasure of crafting.

I often find that if I sit down with the intention of crafting, I find myself lacking inspiration, but when I'm busy doing something else, all sorts of ideas keep popping into my head, as did these whilst I was at work this week. Most of the time I jot them down in a notebook and they go no further, but I'm so glad I made the time this week to carry them through.

Posted with love...from me...to you.