Love Apples

Instead of making their school friends Valentine's Day cards this year, Kitty and Teddy are giving out Love Apples... aren't they sweet!

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 And, they are so super easy to make. All you need is a heart shaped cookie cutter, a green apple and a red apple and a pairing knife.

Push the heart shaped cookie cutter into the apple and then carefully pull it out.

The cookie cutter will have left a heart imprint on your apple... use the pairing knife to carefully cut around the heart so that your apple heart cutout pops out of your apple easily.

Do the same with  the red apple.

Now for the clever part... put the red heart shape into the green apple and the green heart shape into the red apple

Voila!!! The most adorable apples for Valentine's Day.

Have you been crafting hearts with your kids too? If you have, I'd love to see your creations so please link to them in the comment section.

Happy Valentine's Day crafting,
Donni

Love Tree for Valentine's Day

Kitty is on a glitter kick... everything we do lately gets a little glitter. Combine this with Valentine's Day and you'll get a house that's starting to look wonderfully 'bling bling'!

So, it's glitter trees for Valentine's Day!

We found a few pine cones, some glue and a little pink glitter.

We painted the pine cones with glue.

Gave them a liberal dose of glitter.

And, Voila! Pretty pink glittery trees.

Happy Valentine crafting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Love Words for Valentines Day

I've become quite addicted to Pinterest (you can follow my boards by clicking here).
But by the looks of things, I'm not the only one ;-) Oh my... what beautiful things people do!

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So, having seen these 'LOVE' signs all over Pinterest, Kitty and Teddy and I couldn't resist making our own.

All we needed was a few pipe cleaners (wire will do just as well) and pretty yarn (embroidery thread will work too)

 We connected three pipe cleaners together by twisting their ends around each other. Then we twisted the pretty pink yarn around the pipe cleaners. Around and around and around. Kitty finished covering her pipe cleaners in no time at all, but it proved to be a labor of love for Teddy. Great hand-eye co-ordination practice for my little boy and not to mention a test of concentration as he stuck at his task.

When their pipe cleaners were all pretty in pink, we shaped them into a heart for Teddy's and the word 'LOVE' for Kitty's

Kitty's LOVE word is sitting in pride of place on her dressing table and look so soft and gentle in it's fuzzy pinkness.

 Teddy has kept his heart to give to his Valentine (I've very interested to see who that might be).

Happy Valentine's Day crafting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Make a Whitewashed Star for Valentine's Day

Today we put the finishing touches on a vine star we have been working on. We whitewashed it and added a bright red bow and it goes wonderfully with the pretty RED Valentine's Day Wreath we made yesterday.

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Our star has been a work in progress.

First, we collected long strands of Morning Glory. We have Morning Glory growing on our fence and, boy, does it grow!

We stripped the leaves off each strand.

Then, we found an old piece of plank.

Drew out the shape of our star on a piece of paper.

With the paper star in the center of the plank, Teddy did a great job of nailing nails into each corner of our star.

Do you see how each corner has a nail?

Then, Teddy and I wound the vine around the nails... many, many times.

Every now and then, we looped the vine around our work so that it would remain firmly in place once it dried. When a strand of vine ended, we looped it through another, already wound, strand. Then started a new strand by looping it firmly into the star.

When we felt our star was done, I knotted the last piece of vine around the star and pulled tight.

We trimmed off all the loose ends to neaten it up.

And then we set it in the sun to dry for a few days. It's been hot and sunny here in Southern California (yes, 80 degree days!) but if your weather is still a little damp, set your star in a cool, dry spot in your home.

After about a week, it had dried well enough so that when Kitty took it off the nails, it kept it's shape nicely.

Then we whitewashed it. We watered down a little white paint and painted ti roughly.

Then wiped off some of the paint for that rustic limed look.

When the paint had dried, I strung it from a loop of bright red ribbon left over from Christmas and Voila! Look how pretty it looks hanging on our armoire.

Happy Valentine's Crafting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

A Simple Red Valentine's Day Wreath

We made a simple red wreath to decorate our home for Valentine's Day.

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All we needed was a wreath form (I have a few straw ones lying about from a previous project) and bright red ribbon that was left over from Christmas.

We hot glued the ribbon onto the straw wreath and simply wound it around and around the wreath until all the straw was covered. Then we hot glued the ribbon in place. For the finishing touches, we tied our ribbon into a nice big bow and hot glued it in place and Voial! A wonderfully simple Valentine's Day wreath.

Happy Valentine's Crafting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Sparkly Valentine's Votives

One thing we love about the shorter days of winter, is that it can be fun to eat our dinner by candlelight. We get fill our dinner table with all the candles we have. It feels so festive and pretty as the light dances on our faces. And then, of course, it's super fun to sing 'Happy Birthday' 1000 times as we blow them out at the end of the meal... or at least it's super fun for Teddy as 'Happy Birthday' is one of his favorite games.

We thought it would be fun to add some Valentine sparkle to our candle collection. So, we got out our mason jar collection, our glitter and some glue and look what we made... pretty pink Valentine's Day Candle Votives!

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All we needed was old jars, glue, glitter, paintbrushes and some pretty pink ribbon.

With the glue, we painted hearts on the outside of our jars... all around them.

Then we set our jars in a bowl and sprinkled them with pink glitter.

The glitter sticks only to the glue hearts.

Cut a length of ribbon.

Add a dab of glue and glue it around the top of your pretty, glittery jar... tie a pretty pink bow to stick onto the ribbon.

And Voila! Valentine's Day Candle Votives that sparkle so prettily in the candlelight.

Happy Valentine's Crafting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Tutorial :: Needle Felted Hearts for Valentine's Day

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With Valentines Day coming up fast and furious, I'm sure we are not the only ones who are making lots of hearts! There's something so magical about hearts... their voluptuous shape, their romantic colors. Kitty and Teddy are making all sorts of Valentine crafts that we are going to share with you in the coming days. 


But I too, have been making hearts and I am so excited to share another tutorial on needle felting with you. One of the things I love most about needle felting is that you can finish a project in one sitting. You can sit down with a basket of wool and a needle be holding a few beautiful  felted hearts in your hands half an hour later. Of course, you can make wonderfully elaborate creations that take hours and hours but you can also make something in twenty minutes too. I like that.

This is a tutorial on how to make needle felted hearts for Valentines Day. We use a cookie cutter for the heart shape, making this a simple and fast project for beginner needle felting. It's the perfect beginners project as the cookie cutter protects nervous fingers from the sharp needle and will build confidence in the whole needle felting process.

Equipment - Needle felting requires three tools; wool roving, a felting needle and a protective foam board. And, for the hearts, we use a cookie cutter. Wool roving looks like cotton candy. When the sheep is sheered, the fleece is washed and dried and then it is 'carded' - brushed so that all the knots and clumps are brushed out and the fibers of the wool all run the same way. It is then dyed... any wonderful color under the sun :-) This roving can then be spun into yarn (for knitting) or it can be felted.

The protective foam board is not absolutely necessary but it is definitely recommended when you are learning to needle felt. The needle is very sharp and if you don't have a board upon which to steady your work, you will find yourself painfully stabbed more than once.
The felting needle is about 3 inches long. As I said before, it is very sharp. The tip of the needle has a number of small barbs and it is these barbs that felt the wool. It works because the outer surface of each fiber of wool has tiny, microscopic scales on it. When the fiber is agitated, the scales hook into one another, forming a tighter and tighter mass. The needle works because the barbs of the needle 'grab' the fibers as you stab it into the wool, depositing the fibers deeper into the wool. The little scales on the fibers lock together, ensuring that the fibers stay in their new place. By stabbing the wool hundreds of times with your needle, you have control over the form of your wool and can shape it as you wish. You can see the barbs if you look closely at the tip of your needle. 

 Break off a piece of wool about three times the size of the cookie cutter.

 Set the cookie cutter on the protective foam mat.

 Starting at the center too of the heart shape, line the heart cookie cutter with wool.

 Prod the wool until it is all inside the cookie cutter.

 When the wool is inside the cookie cutter, use your needle to gently and evenly poke at the wool. Hold the cookie cutter with the thumb and forefinger of your left hand and needle felt with your right hand. You will see that the wool becomes compacted the more you poke at it. Poke evenly, giving particular attention to the outline of the heart.

As you poke close to the outline of the cookie cutter, be sure to move your fingers to the other side so that if your needle jumps outside the mold, you do not poke your fingers. Try to poke with even controlled strokes. You do not need to lift the needle very high, especially when working around the outside of your woolly heart.

 Once the wool has become nicely compacted inside the heart cookie cutter, gently pry your heart from the foam board, making sure it remains inside the heart cookie cutter.

 Flip the cookie cutter over so that you can now work on the underside of your heart, needle felting it just as before until it too becomes nicely compacted and smooth.

 Again, pay particular attention to the outside shape of your heart... the more you can needle felt it inside the cookie cutter, the better your wool will hold it's heart shape once we take it out of the heart mold.

 When you feel you wool heart is well felted, gently slip it out from the cookie cutter mold. You might need to neaten up the edges by needle felting your heart some more.

 If you want to add a loop of ribbon to hang your heart, use a pair of small, sharp scissors to make a small hole in the top of your heart.

 Tie a knot in the ribbon to make a loop.

 Use the blunt edge of your felting needle to poke the ribbon knot into the hole. Then, needle felt the hole shut so that your ribbon is firmly felted into the wool.

Voila! You have just made a delightful felted heart to hang somewhere special in your home.

I hope you have enjoyed this needle felting project.

If you would like to give this project a try but don't know where to start finding the needle felting equipment, I have make up a few kits for sale over at Fairyfolk.  The kits include all you will need to make three large hearts, one red, one pink and one white.

I have other needle felting kits available in my shop if you wish to try something new... felted pebbles for lovely home decor, felted toadstools and pumpkins, felted balls as well as kits of lovely colored wool for you to make whatever your heart desires. Please visit my shop
www.fairyfolk.etsy.com and look under the Kits section.

Don't forget that you can also find wonderful needle felting equipment at A Child's Dream Come True too.

Happy felting and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about needle felting.
Blessings and magic,
Donni