Valentine Crafternoon and Watercolor Play

It's February! Month of love, fun, and eventually Lent. (Did anyone else pick up that Lent begins on Valentine's Day? I didn't, till yesterday.)

The February image from my friend Kate McNenly's "Birdiferous" calendar

 Sometimes you get so into what you are doing, you forget to take pictures of people actually doing it!

She says company is coming. Me, I'm a cat. I don't want company. I don't want them to pick me up. I just want food, birds and a nap.

Such was the case when Lizzie and I hosted a Valentine crafternoon for a couple of friends. My contribution to the party was cookies...

....raspberry bars (Ina Garten's -- HERE. Super easy). Chill them a bit and cut nicely into shapes with a cookie cutter...

...and everything from cards to paper stock, ribbon to glue and boatloads of embellishments so we could make candy boxes (see tutorial here) and valentines.

When all was said and done, we had quite the collective collection!

Here are the candy boxes -- Mine reflects Rick's music love; Jan recalls tango lessons and Kate used some beautiful marbled paper she bought in Florence.

Here are our valentines. Check out the one with the Bingo card that Jan made. We looked up Bingo Lingo on Google. Do you know that in Britain numbers have expressions that are called out? If you have a 14 on your card and someone calls out "Valentine's Day!" you'd better mark it!

 I realized I can probably never play bingo in England.

They left with the easiest takeaways I've ever pulled together -- cute little ice cream cups with a potholder, starlight mints and a bag of valentine cookies.

I've been busy painting these days, too.

I did this little girl first in markers (markers that were getting dry, by the way. Time for some new brush markers!) Then I re-did her in watercolor. (On the right) They have their own character and details. The watercolor is definitely softer.

                     

I had fun with this scene too.  The big tree needs work but I was really pleased with the background trees!

In a recent post, Lynne shared some things her art friends had done and this one provided great inspiration for the snowflake below. The gray bits are actually some silver metallic watercolor. Loads of wet-on-wet here!

And of course, you've gotta have heart! It's February!

And don't forget, everyone needs a hug or two!

Stay cozy!

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