I Heart You

Story of a Process

You know, when one is a crafty person, one must prepare in advance for every holiday. I was going to start working on my Christmas cards for next year, but for the art group, I first needed to complete 22 Valentine's pages for a collaborative book. And, given that the pages are due in a week, this rainy weekend was a perfect time to immerse myself in this project.

The concept is great! Our lovely host, Rosa, thought it would be cool to make a book to nest inside a heart cookie cutter. How sweet! She sent each of the contributors a template for our cards, to make sure they fit inside the cookie cutter. I went through my envisioning process, with the aim toward doing something different from the traditional pink, red, white color palettes. I had some really cool, texture-y kind of black cardstock, so I cut all my Valentines from that. I'd already committed myself to using my spray paints on a project, and I thought a black and metallic palette sounded appealing.

I selected a heart-shaped stencil for spray-painting, and went out on my front porch to spray a heart onto each card. I had a silvery metallic paint, and a copper paint. I split these among the cards.

At this point, I started to get a feeling for how I wanted the cards to look, and I planned the steps of my process accordingly. I knew I wanted to have a variety of elements on the card to add visual interest. I chose an organic element (a feather), some extra texture by use of a fiber, and a wire element (a wire heart) for each card. I also wanted to give the black cardstock a bit more 'pop' by adding some glitter or shine. And I remembered that I'd gotten some Krylon glitter spray once during a sale, and thought that would be perfect. But I didn't want to put it down on top of the feather or the fiber, so I had to prepare the cards in stages. I had the spray-painted heart on each card now. The next step was to do as much as I could before adding the glitter, so I would not have to touch the glittered card any more than necessary.

I decided to apply the fiber and the feather after the glitter spray so they would not have glitter on them. I did put a slit in each card for the feather's stem, and I love words, so I included some text in a metallic pen, knowing it would be harder to write over glitter. At this point, I also attached the wire heart.

Now it was time to glitter. To test it, I sprayed it on a piece of scrap, and it looked lovely! I thought it was perfect on the black. I noticed that the nozzle of the can continued to 'spritz' after I'd finished, so I worked on it until it stopped oozing, and got the cards ready for the spray. But, when I put the first card down to spray it, the spray came out in big wet drops instead of a fine glitter spray, and it looked icy and snowy, instead of glittery. I worked some more with the nozzle, but realized it was not going to happen the way I wanted.

I wasn't sure what to do. I had some microfine silver glitter, but I didn't want to put adhesive on every card with the concern that it would make it too wet or too sticky for the rest of the elements. I'm not very experienced with spray adhesive yet. So I decided, in order to try to get the sparkle and pop I wanted, I would put a very fine mist of the same silver spray I'd used with some of the stencils. It actually turned out pretty well. The only issue was that some of the text wasn't as visible under the mist, now. I decided to go ahead and spray all the cards, and re-apply the text at the end.

It was looking okay. I then put the feather stem through the slit I'd made on each card, and adhered a lavender cardstock backing on each card to give it more substance and stabilize the feather. Although the front of the card is the focus, the back should have a bit of decoration, because each page of the book will be turned. I put some little stickers and some identification on the back.

The only thing that remained to do was to attach the fiber to the edges, leaving room for our host to bind the cards on the upper left curve.

I was fairly pleased with the result. After two rainy days of constant attention, the cards turned out pretty well. The only thing I regret is that the text is not popping out because of the spray. I tried re-applying it, but none of my pens or pencils, of which I have many, will write over the spray layer.

So, that's the process. I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished book, and the work of all the artists who are contributing to it.

Next up: Chris has an accident with edible glitter.