Hearts and flowers

How is it possible that Valentine's Day is less than a month away now?  January always flies by for me -- why am I surprised?

I'm cutting off entry into my Valentine's Day swap tonight, so here's your last chance to join: read about it here.  Now, normally I don't show what I'm making for a swap before I send it off, but, since I'm hostessing this one I thought I would take a detour from that habit.  That way, participants have a sort of an example; I hope you don't mind.

It took me several days to come up with inspiration this time.  Finally, I decided upon the idea of a garden fence decorated with a heart banner.  I chose fabrics (on the left, felted wool, and then for the fence, plain white muslin), and freehand stitched a fence.

And here's the finished ornament!  Remember, for the swap the maximum size is 3" overall, and this is whole thing is just under that.  So, imagine how itty bitty those hearts on the banner are!  That was the hardest part -- cutting out those tiny hearts!  I stitched the muslin to the front of the heart, making it a sort of pocket into which I tucked a bouquet of mini flowers.

While I'm at it, I wanted to show you this amazing Christmas gift I got from my buddy Rebecca -- it's a vase by Fringe Studio.

I love it like crazy!  Right now I have it out on display empty -- I mean, how can you improve it?  I thought I might fill it with something rather than flowers.  Any ideas for me?

Speaking of Christmas presents: my husband took the hint and bought me this book by Etsian Mincing Mockingbird.  It's an art book of some of his gorgeous original watercolors of, what else, birds!  But what makes the art even more special is their snarky, sarcastic and sometimes inspirational captions!  Take a look:

What I take for granted would bring you to your knees

Here's something I did the other day: an embellished vintage purse.  I've had the nice leather purse for years when, to my dismay, I saw that something had spilled onto it, leaving a stain in the leather.  I thought to myself, Maybe I can cover that up.  So I chose some pretty embellishments and, because I didn't have any leather needles, I glued them on with The Ultimate Glue.  The label on the glue said it worked on leather -- and I was skeptical but very happy to be proven wrong!

Finally: thanks everyone for hanging in with me during yesterday's blackout in protest of the SOPA/PIPA bill.  You know I never talk politics on this blog but this time I just couldn't stay silent.  It's too important.  The blackout was effective!  I heard that 35 Senators now publicly oppose it (compared to 5 the day before), and public awareness has grown exponentially.  Let's keep contacting our Senators (a list of contacts is here) between now and the day of the vote!