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Tips for Making Your Own Holiday Greetings for Valentine’s Day

Vintage Valentine Postcard

The winter holidays whizzed by and now many are contemplating what to do to get their loved ones for Valentine’s Day.  With so many online shop venues available, it’s getting a little easier to find vintage Valentine holiday greetings from the past or at least digital images you can download for your own projects.  You can also buy items that are handcrafted by others on sites such as Etsy for original Valentine greetings.

But maybe this year, you want to put a little extra time in making your own handcrafted Valentine greetings?  And why not? Doing it yourself can be such a sweet way of showing your thoughtfulness and there are many places you can get information or supply kits in order to shorten your production time.

As a matter of fact, usually popular women’s magazines such as Country Living and Martha Stewart’s Living are great resources for vintage handmade projects  that you can make for Valentine’s that include detailed product lists, supply sources as well as specific instructions.  They also provide quite a bit of ideas and templates in their online websites.  And of course, plenty of pictures to explain the step help as well.  The popular Pinterest is also another great resource for pictures and links to relevant  instructions on the original websites or blogs.

In addition, several do it yourself sites are popping up online with great information and tips for your own handcrafted projects, for example,  a great web resource to check out is Instructables.  Keep in mind though, at this site, you don’t have the high end photographers,Photoshopped photography and staging that you do at high end magazines but you do get quite a bit of great do it yourself ideas.  You can view most of the pictures and instructions online but you will need  to sign up for a membership in order to download their pdf instruction files.  In addition, you can also download  vintage digital images (as was done for this article) from sites like Flickr or Photobucket.  Many images that are made available on Flickr by individuals allow you to use the images for personal use and others include the copyright for personal and commercial use.

With these tips in mind  you will be well on your way to creating a very memorable project  that should bring a smile on your loved ones faces for Valentine’s Day.

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Author’s Note:  The following pic is an example from Pinterest of how you can mix vintage postcard images with modern home decor.

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Ringing in the New Year!

New YearWow, now that the 2011 holiday season is behind us, you probably are gearing up for what 2012 will bring.  Most everyone is rolling out their to do lists and action plans as we begin this year and try to assess which direction they will take their blog or online businesses.

So just wanted to be there to say Happy New Year and check back to some of the improvements I’ll be making to this site.

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Glassware: The Clear View on Glassware Artisans

Once you get a peek into the world of glassware artisans, it’s almost amazing to watch the combination of skill and artistry that comes with the age old techniques that are still used to make art glass and glassware today.  Who better than the Corning Glassware Museum to give a demonstration of the skills and techniques used to create blown glass and art glass.

Not too bad a product, when you realize that glass is largely made from sand (or rather silica).  According to Wikipedia…

“The history of creating glass can be traced back to 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia.[1] The term glass developed in the late Roman Empire. It was in the Roman glassmaking center at Trier, now in modern Germany, that the late-Latin term glesum originated, probably from a Germanic word for a transparent, lustrous substance”

All I can say, that meals, and the beverages we consume, at meals are made more elegant and beautiful with the addition of glassware. And what other objects can be made from glass?  Objects made out of glass include not only traditional objects such as vessels (bowls, vases, bottles, and other containers), paperweights, marbles, beads, but an endless range of sculpture and installation art as well.