HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

Bellamine & Wendy here and we want to wish all of our friends a beary happy Valentine's Day. Mom didn't tell us about Valentine's until after it was too late to make some cards and get them mailed to all our friends so we are doing the next best thing and giving you this cute little bear Valentine now.

Yesterday we got a package in the mail from our Oma Linda. We knew we were going to be getting something but we didn't know what because it was a surprise. This is what was in the package.

Oma made us this beautiful Valentine with pretty hearts and building blocks. There was some chocolates for us and we didn't even have to share. We are keeping the pretty pink paper heart and next year when we decorate we will put it out with the blocks which we're going to leave sitting out all of the time cause we love, love, love it so much. Did you hear that Oma?  

We already ate our chocolates but Mom bought more. 

We hope everyone is having a wonderful day and getting lots of chocolate and Valentines and cakes and kisses and hugs. Love is what Valentine's Day is all about so we wish you all a day spending time with those you love and who love you. We're lucky cause we've got a lot of love going on here.

~Happy Valentine's Day~ 



Heaps of hugs,

Bellamine & Wendy 

 the North Pole Bears & Maddyrose

An Enchanted Tree With Heart(s)

I've been working on several projects this past week and have one finished and I thought I'd share a few photos with you. Last post there was a tree covered in hearts and fairies which ended up sitting on the buffet in the dining room.  This time I'm going to show you what an enchanted tree might look like dressed for the holiday. I decided to try something different with the decorations for this tree.

Okay, laugh if you must. It's not like this little guy is going to hear you. You may remember this tree from a previous post. I used a pattern that my sister Maggie was selling on her blog. He normally has three leaves and a crow adorning him but for this occasion he's covered in hearts.

The hearts are made from paper mache clay and I painted them with a base coat of black gesso then two or more coats of acrylic paint then after sealing them I dry brushed a metallic antique gold paint lightly to give the hearts a soft patina.

Some of of the hearts have eyelet hooks screwed into the V of the heart and then were threaded with black and gold metallic ribbon. Others I threaded gold jewelry making wire and metallic gold thread through a hole I drilled.

  

I've always thought the objects made from paper mache clay have the look and feel of wood. In this instance it makes me think of stone or metal. These little hearts have a jewelry like quality. They would make great pendants which is why I hung the largest one the way I did.  

Our little enchanted tree has such a sad look about him I decided he needed someone to cheer him up and who better than Myrtle the Queen of Luv?

Myrtle arrived in the mail this week.  She is the prize I won in the giveaway at LLA Creations. Over at LLA Creations, Lisa has the most adorable and whimsical creations that she carves from wood. If you haven't been to her site you should pay her a visit.  I'm sure you'll keep going back.

I've also been working on a rug crocheted from "woolly worms" that Maggie gave me. It would be done if I'd work on it more consistently but the worms which are long narrow strips of wool blanket are very fuzzy and they make such a mess not to mention make my hands itch. I'll probably finish it up today.

I'm also working on something for Easter and a few other projects that you'll have to wait to see. Hope you enjoyed your visit and leave here with a smile on your face. 

~Happy Valentine's Day~

As always, thanks for stopping by.

BUSY BEARS CREATING

Here we are again. Good thing for Mom she has us to pick up the slack. Seems she's been in a bit of a slump where creating is concerned, but not us. Nope!! No way are we in a slump!

This week we made some pretty Valentine's hearts out of salt dough and painted them. There are 50 hearts and we painted them four different colors. The lacy edged ones we painted white and then gave them a pearl finish. The plain edged hearts we painted with Sweetheart Blush for the darkest color and then mixed it with white for the second color and then more white to make a really pale pink for the third color. We finished them with crystals sprinkled over mod podge but it doesn't show up very well in the photos. Darn! The crystals make them look really sparkly.

We used gold jewelry making wire to hang the hearts on our little tree. We convinced Mom to let us decorate our tree differently for each of the holidays, not just Christmas. Neat idea, don't you agree? 

We covered the basket that the tree sits in with light pink fabric and tied it with a pretty ribbon.

We thought this little music box looked nice sitting near the tree. It used to belong to our grandma Audrey but we have it in our room now.

Here is a close-up of one of the fairies that have come to sit in our tree. There are two different types and we're not sure how many of them there are and we're afraid to count them because we don't want them to get spooked and fly away.

Here's where we set our tree first. It's a table in front of the window of our room. Mom said it was so pretty we should put it somewhere everyone could see it, so we told her we would let her put it on the buffet in the dining room.

It does look nice sitting there next to the bowl of hearts and the pretty little doll with Sampson on her lap.

Wave at the camera, Sampson.

Isn't he the cutest little bear? He likes being held.

Mom has more hearts in this room. There's the heart shaped wreath on the wall with a really pretty felted heart she received as a gift from her friend Jan hanging from it.

There's another wreath, not heart shaped, but it does have a heart hanging from it that she got from our Oma Linda.

We're already starting to work on ornaments for another holiday. Here's a sneak peek.

There they are, next to some of the hearts we just finished. We can't figure out why Mom says that pink isn't one of her favorite colors. We love it. Pink and purple. We love them both.

Well, we're off to visit our bear friends who blog on Friday. Hope you enjoyed seeing our tree. It was fun to make and we think we might have inspired Mom. She's making some little hearts out of paper mache clay. We tried to make some too but that stuff is sticky and messy and our hearts didn't turn out. They looked like yucky, nasty lumps, not very pretty. You don't want to know what they really looked like. When Oakley said what he thought they looked like, Mom said, "That's enough potty talk." Our friend Wilbur made some and boy oh boy he's really good at it!

Well, thanks for visiting and do come back.

Hugs from the North Pole bears,

Bellamine & Wendy