Why Valentine's Day?

It's 14th of February and once again we celebrate or hate today's holiday, worldwide known as Saint Valentine's Day. Have you ever thought about reason why we celebrate it and where this holiday originated from? Stories vary but all of them follows brave and romantic actions of martyr Saint Valentine. 

In 3rd century, Roman Emperor Claudius II decided that single men are better soldiers than those who are married, so he prohibited young men from marriages. Despite of this law, Saint Valentine performed marriages for young lovers in secret for love sake. Unfortunately he was discovered, imprisoned and sentenced to death for his actions. During his imprisonment he fell in love with jailor's blind daughter (here the story varies) whom he according to some legends healed and right before his death he sent her a note with "Your Valentine" written on it. 

If you want to surprise your chosen Valentine, try to create something yourselves. Don't buy merchandised products, rather be original and use your head to find out what would really make your love happy. 

And don't forget, LOVE EVERYDAY!

Original gift: Clean, paint and decoupage lids of some jars and fill the jars with jam of your favourite flavour, with some sweets and custard powder of your choice (I love the chocolate one). Put together the recipe and original gift is created. Enjoy <3

Gift Bag

When friends of mine are celebrating their birthday, they deserve personalised gift bags:

Tup and Ladybug. Hand-drawn with Letraset Promarkers.

Design is my own and is subjected to copyright matter.

Baby Boom

As I mentioned in the previous post, there were a lot of storks with packages flying around last year, so no wonder I had an urge to hand-craft something special for new mommies (: 

The first gift was for the second best mommy in the world (right after my Mom), for my sister. Therefore, I tried to put into it some thought and possibly a lot of creativity, so she would be pleasantly surprised. The idea was to make a beautiful My first baby girl photo album and I think I was quite successful with the creativity part. See for yourself:

For the cover pages I used a 1mm chipboard, so it would give it a proper hardness, on top of it I placed 2oz batting for little bit of softness and covered it with beautiful flower petal paper. The push chair I draw myself, I tried several templates but on the end I wanted it to be all original, so I let my creativity flow and ended up with a nice drawing embroidered with a pink ribbon and small pearl. Underneath it I placed a white foamboard Name Tag with little pink baby foot prints on sides.

Inside the album, there are 20 pages of thick white printer craft card with wave cutting on the outside edge and baby feet cut-outs in the corners. Every page has an own white acid free tissue paper (with the same wave cutting on the outside edge to match) for protecting photos. 

Baby Girl Photo Album and Nappy Cake

Baby Boy Nappy Cake

Baby Boy Nappy Cake and so-called Baby Cake

Design is my own and is subjected to copyright matter.

Love Your Planet: Recycled Products

As I mentioned before, I was also Product Designer during my appearance in Love Your Planet organisation. The aim was to take any material (glass bottles, newspaper, pulltabs, etc) and recycle/upcycle it into new usable product. 

Here are some examples: 

My workstation during summer

Anything is useful when you are upcycling

Book marker

Cans

Pulltabs jewellery

Old towels cut into stripes and transformed into bath rug. See instructions here.

All photographs are my own and therefore are subjected to copyright matter.