Happy Valentine's Day, Anne!

Valentine's Day is just around the corner!  Just five more days.  I can hardly keep up between celebrating the fifteen days of Spring Festival, Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day.  But that's okay.  I'm having fun and staying busy, and this is how I like to be. 

I remember seeing this pretty pink babydoll style dress offered for Anne last month and thinking it would be a great dress for Valentine's Day.  And with that, Grace was offered a Burberry coat outfit during January's Grace Subscription Box video.  Equally, I thought that would make a nice wintery-February outfit for Grace.  I'll tell you, it's been great having new clothes, and so many choices available for these dolls.  It frees me up to work on projects like the last Alice Illustrated and spend my time with tiny accessories for these dolls. 

It's not that I don't enjoy sewing for these dolls, as I do when there's something I really want for them, but otherwise, I'm happy working on other things.

Valentine's Day isn't celebrated in this house.  I just don't have a romantically inclined husband, so I enjoy the holiday celebration with my dolls.

The freedom to enjoy holidays just as I want to, through my dolls, is another reason I enjoy them so much.  Dress them up, create some accessories, set them back where I display them, and the atmosphere of the holiday is always present.

While I admire the beauty and charm of lacey, flowery Victorian Valentines, I adore vintage die-cut Valentines.  These were what we brought to class in the early 60's to share with our classmates.  The best ones were always saved for that cute boy, who could have cared less.  LOL   But over the years, I've saved off quite a nice digital stash of them found on Pinterest.  Fortune tellers and aliens being my favorites.  Robots, too!  I even have a very nice collection of Alice Valentines.  Big surprise there!

So, in planning a display with Anne and Grace, the die-cut cards and something to put them in set me on the path.

Unless you've been with me on the blog for a very long time, you wouldn't remember, but I created Polly Pratt's Valentine Messenger by Sheila Young for my Polly, and she had a Valentine envelope sack.  I decided to do one for Grace to hold, that would be a gift for Anne to put her Valentines in.

It's made of wool felt, with embroidered edging, and a magnetic closure at the felt heart.  If it were a purse, it would have been half this size and made of leather.  Hmmm!  Just thought of that.  Next time.

The next thing I really wanted to do was create a heart chain for Anne.  Bad idea.  You can't fold enough paper that small and cut out the shape without bulk complications.  I tried several different kinds of thin paper.  Made it over maybe seven times with terrible results.  Made is shorter.  But I did not want to make it bigger!  It should be scaled for Anne.  sigh   So I settled on a red gift bag cut up, which was still too thin to hold up, but I got the length I wanted.

Just letting you know so that if you see this and think it's a good idea, you'll be prepared.  

I also wanted to make a honeycomb Beistle heart for her.  Not me!  I didn't do this!  Anne did!  LOL   Its okay.  It's cute, but I probably should have just made a heart man out of paper with accordion paper legs and arms.  I still might do that.  That would have caused me less frustration.  

Where I had the most fun was making the miniature die-cut card boxes and snipping out miniature die-cut Valentines.  

And there were these little houses to print out and put together.

I made a few printed lace doily Victorian Valentines that I thought Grace would enjoy, but she actually likes the die-cuts as much as Anne.

I must have spent five hours selecting images and printing them out in miniature just to make these cards.  As with most of what I do, the research and preparation is more time consuming than putting things together.  I do sit at my computer a lot.

Here's Anne displaying her pretty things.

Close up of the Valentine boxes, complete with cellophane windows.

Remember I made boxes like this, only larger, to store Peggy Sue's clothing?  Same kind of boxes only printed tiny.

The yellow box of cards.

And the pink box of cards!

And finally, the exchange.  Grace did love the special Victorian card Anne made for her.  But she sure gets a kick out of the die-cuts.

No, this is not a long blog.  Just a fun one wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day!

Three more days of the Chinese New Year festivities, which will end with the Lantern Festival on the first full moon of the Lunar New Year.  I've learned so much about the fifteen-day celebration this year and posted what the Chinese do each of the fifteen days, on Facebook.  While doing this, I put together my first Lego.  A miniature Lego Chinese Money Tree.  Cutest darned thing, but boy, what a pill to put together.  Lego created several like this celebrating the Chinese festivals.  And yes, I plan to make them all.  A meditation for sure.  Many do overs, but I got it put together it was a proud moment.

For now, I'm going with the flow.  I try not to lock myself into any one project unless I want to be there, but I do, seriously, want to finish Sister Bear.  Issue?  Its ALL embroidery.  All.  So, it's a lot of work, and effort. However, with this little Valentine's Day project behind me, I can pick it up again.  Even if just for a little while.  

Happy Valentine's Day!

Mini Lego Chinese Money Tree