On Monday, we shared how to make a beautiful heart garland and ornaments, and today we have two more eco-friendly Valentine projects that are easy, satisfying, and beautiful.

Paper Collage Hearts

In the example above, we used a combination of stickers and magazine paper to create collages.  To recreate this, just tear out pieces of magazine paper with interesting colors and patterns, and glue them, overlapping each other, onto a plain piece of printer paper (this helps reinforce the flimsy magazine paper).  After the glue dries, trace out your shapes and cut them out.

Easy and utterly unique!

You can layer it on top of a larger heart made of your leftover Artterro paper, or keep them as they are.  You’ll end up with Valentines that really stand out!

Another fun and easy idea if you’re looking for something different is to create a Valentine bouquet.  Once again, we used our own handmade, recycled paper, so if you have any leftover from one of our kits, it works beautifully because it’s so sturdy.  Otherwise, you can use whatever paper you on hand, or some of the collage hearts described above.

Warm Valentine wishes

You’ll also need stems.  We used wooden wands from our Bubble Wands Kit, but you could also use Popsicle sticks, straws, actual sticks from your yard, or any number of objects from around your house.  Just glue together two of your hearts, leaving room at the bottom to poke in your stem.

Leave just a little room for the stem

Find a cute container or wrap the stems with a ribbon so it’s easy to present to your sweetheart.  You can personalize all the hearts with special messages if you want!  Get creative and add leaves, bumblebees or butterflies to your bouquet!

We hope you enjoy these ideas, which are especially perfect if Valentine’s Day snuck up on you like it did to me

Happy Valentine’s Day from everyone at Artterro!

Last week we posted about an easy way to keep your arts and crafts organized–the mobile art station.  Did you try it out?  Let us know in the comments!  Today we’re excited to share some very easy, simple, yet beautiful and eco-friendly Valentine’s Day projects.   No need to buy new materials.  As always, we highly recommend looking around your house for materials to upcycle.  If you have some leftover Artterro supplies, or you save magazines, postcards or greeting cards, now is a great time to repurpose them!

A Valentine Garland

First up, this lovely heart garland.  All you need is some beautiful Artterro handmade paper (or whatever paper you have in the house), any color thread you want and a nice big needle to string them together.  We used two sizes of heart stencils and chose different colors and patterns, but you could go for a monochromatic garland as well.  Sew the hearts together towards the top so that they hang nicely:

A simple stitch towards the top of the heart

Here’s the view from behind:

So easy!

A simple, satisfying and lovely decoration for Valentine’s Day.  Surprise someone special, give it as a gift, or cheer up your own office or living room!

Heart Ornament

Next, a fun and festive Valentine ornament.  This time, combine some of your leftover Artterro beads (or whatever beads you have on hand) with your paper hearts.  You’ll want to string some beads, then glue two hearts together with the thread in between, then string more beads, and so on.  When you get to the top, just make a loop and double knot it.  You can hang your lovely ornament from your mantle or attach it to a special gift.  If you make several extra-long ones, you could even fill up an entire door frame–perfect if you’re hosting a Valentine party!

Here’s another variation with a cluster of interesting patterned hearts (don’t be afraid to play with non-traditional colors!):

Heart Cluster Ornament

What’s your favorite way to make easy and eco-friendly Valentines?

If you want to wish loved ones a Happy New Year or help your kids write some thank-you notes, consider making the cards by hand.  It’s so fun and easy!  All you really need is paper, scissors and glue.  The trick is to start with good quality paper.  If you have one of our Bookmaking, Art Dolls or Creativity Kits at home, you can use some of our beautiful, handmade, recycled paper.  You just need something sturdy for the main piece, and then you can embellish with whatever strikes your fancy.  Look around your house; you may have some interesting and unexpected scraps from magazines, old greeting cards, wrapping paper, even wallpaper.

So many possibilities with beautiful paper...

We made these cards with Artterro paper today to show you just how easy it can be.  No complicated designs or intricate techniques needed (check out this Martha Stewart post for those!), just a few fun patterns and shapes and your own heartfelt message.

Don't be afraid to use contrasting designs.

The Artful Parent blogger recently made some cards with her daughter using our Bookmaking Kit.  See what they came up with–

Beautiful cards made with our Bookmaking Kit

We hope you give card-making a try!  It feels so special to get a handmade card in the mail.  Have fun!

We are so thrilled to be selling our kits through Fair Indigo, a wonderful fair trade catalog and web store.  They only sell beautiful items that are fair trade or made ethically in the US, and we’re proud to be part of their catalog and movement to make fair trade fashionable and accessible.

This week they asked Forrest to share some thoughts on holiday giving.  You can also read the original post here on the Fair Indigo blog, which we highly recommend.  The previous post is on how to make your very own Peace wreath–what a fun project!

Stuff, Stuff, and More Stuff

Every year when the holidays roll around I start to think about the all the Stuff. I start to feel a little sad, and I’m reminded of the movie The Story of Stuff.  If you haven’t watched it, it’s about how our stuff is made out of raw materials from the earth and how most of it ends up in a landfill only six months after it’s made.  Just when I’m resolving not to contribute to this huge problem, one of my young sons runs up to me with a list in his hands and a big smile on his face and says, “Here Mom, this is what I want for my birthday and Christmas.”  Both my sons have birthdays the week before Christmas, so that means we tend to get twice the amount of Stuff this time of year.  At that point, I snap out of my anti-Stuff mindset and tell myself that I need to start thinking about it in a different way.  We don’t have to buy disposable Stuff.  We can buy truly meaningful, even life-changing gifts for the people we love, plus we can make some special gifts by hand.

One of my favorite ways to make a difference with my dollar is to buy Fair Trade, which means an artisan has been paid a fair wage for their work.  It feels like buying a gift for three people: the recipient who gets to enjoy it, the artisan who is strengthening her community and family, and yourself, because it just feels good to give Fair Trade!

I’m also partial to giving a gift that offers a hands-on experience, like art materials or my own Artterro Eco Art Kits.  When you give a child the gift of art, you offer them a chance to unplug and tap into their creativity.

Finally, we can also make very special gifts ourselves.  It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.  Try finding a project idea online that you can complete with new and used materials.  It’s a great way to upcycle supplies you may have lying around your house, and you end up with a totally unique finished product.

For many years now I have been doing all three of these things.  I feel so good knowing that I gave my money to good companies, I’m giving my kids gifts that are educational, and I’m giving things I already own a new life and home.  It helps me feel better about all this Stuff not ending up in a landfill in six months.  Okay, I’m off to make some handmade gifts—wish me luck that I will get them done on time!

In case you missed the flurry of Facebook and Twitter updates, something exciting is happening at Artterro, and we need your help to make it a success!  Last week we launched a project that will connect us with a larger community of fans and supporters, boost sales, and help us grow our company.  It’s our Kickstarter Campaign featuring our very cool new video and lots of fantastic supporter rewards.

Not familiar with Kickstarter?  This “crowd-funding” website lets artists and creative companies bypass traditional banks and investors by going directly to their communities to find many backers.  Backers can give a little bit or a lot in exchange for a variety of unique rewards.  In our case, the rewards are various selections of Artterro kits at a great price.

So, why support Artterro via Kickstarter instead of ordering from our webstore or elsewhere?

1. The infusion of sales will allow us to fund our next production run up front, which greatly improves our cash flow during our slowest season.
2. This campaign will help us spread the word about Artterro.  Campaigns are designed to be easily shareable, so hopefully you’ll tell your friends and families, who will tell their friends and so on.
3. When you support an up-and-coming business on Kickstarter, you’re voting with your dollars in favor of innovation, creativity and grassroots economic development.  We hope that you will explore lots of projects on Kickstarter.  We can all build the New Economy together!

We cannot do this without you.  We really need all our fans and supporters to help this campaign gain momentum and get off the ground fast!  Kickstarter is all or nothing, if we don’t reach our goal, we don’t get funded and no one is charged.  Here’s what you can do:

• Click here to check out our campaign and very cool video
• Pledge to our campaign
• Link to our campaign on Facebook & Twitter
• Forward this blog post to family, friends & co-workers

And please let us know what you think of this crowd-funding idea!   We hope that it will help us grow into a bigger, better, even more creative and sustainable Artterro.  Thank you for believing in us!