HEART DAY PROJECTS

These are these are the latest sachets with embroidered felt and lavender. All the  embroidery is done freehand with obvious asymmetry.

REUSE, USE UP, MAKE DO

For all their  good intentions,  upcyclists can enlarge their footprint in  the process of repurposing an object normally consigned to to the trash bin. Take my plan to reuse tomato tins, for example. I can cover them in fabric, which is biodegradable, but which must be treated in order to remain clean. That seems  to be, ecologically, the lesser of evils.  Then there is spray painting, which releases fluorocarbons into the atmophere and  leaves  leaves behind an unusable container. It is with that in mind that I will not repeat this project once I use up the blue and green chalkboard spray paint I purchased.  I have found a recipe for homemade   chalkboard paint  and that is what I will use next time along with I will buy  paint packaged in a reusable container. For the moment, this is what I am doing with the material on hand. 

Repurposed cookie tins. 

Upcycled tomato tins.

NOte: I am having trouble with Blogger's editing function. The text was not meant to be in caps, but after having had an entry disappear twice, this will have to do. Sorry.

EVERY DAY IS VALENTINE'S DAY II

Left--Envelope with stamped and hand tinted image pasted on paper doily layered over  yellow  paint chip. 

Right--Card made with stamped and hand tinted  image of tea pot pasted on cupcake wrapper.

A used manila envelope cut into fourths and layered with cupcake wrapper and lacy paper doily

 makes great  mailers for garden seeds and small trinkets.

Valentine card and envelope made with paint chips, stamped image and paper doily.





An unexpected snowfall  calls for a well provided wood box, a pot of soup, a loaf of crisp bread. I had the latter on hand, after a productive day in the kitchen.  The latter required a trip to the wood pile where my invaluable wood guy had left me a cord of seasoned  cherry logs. That is when I found out that my efficient Scandinavian   wood latest batch of Valentines I intend to send to distant friends early next week.
The first Valentine I made this year was a sachet filled with lavender from my garden. I designed it for  someone whose vision and seriously impaired , which is why it was important to place  texture and fragrance above elements with great visual appeal. I created a little felt heart   embroidered with  French knots, clear seed beads and a cotton fabric applique that combines  a satisfyingly tactile quality and the rich scent of lavender blossom. This was such fun to make that I decided to add a similar sachet to the cards I am sending out.

 I like all  Valentines  though I deplore the commercialization of the holiday. Rather than buying mass produced cards I prefer to make my own. I use card stock base layered with  stamped, hand tinted images, paint chips, paper doilies,  cupcake wrappers and recycled  paint chips, lunaria (money plant) discs  from my garden  and candy wrappers. am particularly happy with  the You Are My Cup of Tea cards shown  in today and yesterday's posts.   I am equally happy with my oatmeal variation on the  cast iron bread recipe from Kinfolks Magazine   I read about in Alice Paulson's blog 

Oat bread baked in cast iron Dutch oven.

Chicken soup with egg noodles.

Orange curd--4 eggs beaten with half a cup of sugar, half a teaspoon cinnamon, half a teaspoon vanilla, three quarters of a cup of orange juice. Cook at medium temperature for approximately ten minutes or until it begins to thicken. 

Homemade hot chocolate mix.

EVERY DAY IS VALENTINE'S DAY--I

Envelope embellished with doily, stamped French script and printed hand coloured clip art.

My Cup of Tea card. 

Bookmark made with origami paper and recycled envelope.

Above: Envelope embellished with paper doily, lunaria and glue on crystal.
Below: Card made with origami paper hearts and hand tinted stamped image and tiny fan made from recycled gold chocolate wrapper.

                           Card and envelope made with paper doilies and stamped images.

Handmade mini notebook covered in burlap and decorated with plastic snowflake button and felt heart.

Mini notebook has endpapers made with from origami print.

Material used  to make bookmark and matchbook.

These are some of my Valentine's Day projects.More at the EVERYTHING PAPYREAN page.

UPCYCLING

Beer bottle caps made into  pins and magnets.

                                                               Fabric covered tomato tomato tins.

Most of  us want to keep the  landfills in our communities from reaching capacity. Wherever and whenever possible, we recycle paper, glass and metal objects. Some of us go beyond mere recycling to  reinvent  objects First World citizens once threw away. We do what people of  conscience have always done  out of the conviction that  to be  wasteful is immoral and impractical. We follow a tradition that inspired quilters to make useful visually enchanting bedding out of  old clothing--the same tradition that  led women who lived through the Depression  to make beautiful dresses and linens out of feedsacks.
My own contribution to the upcycling movement is minor. It includes turning food tins into receptacles for pencils, pens, sewing implements, small gadgets, plants . I use either  paint, fabric or paper to cover the tins. The result can be pleasant.

I cannot say that I find my first attempt at making pins and magnets out of beer bottle caps was either pleasant nor admirable. Judge for yourself. I find the process fiddly and the result mediocre. Perhaps it is a question of persisting with the craft until I get better at it. Right now have supposedly upsycled Stella Artois  bottle caps I tortured with tin snips and a ball peen hammer before I gussied them up with a French stamp,  printed Redoute roses and glitter glue. The world was just fine without  them.

RULE LEMON CURD

Mosaic 

on the wall of a 6th.century synagogue in the southern Negev, Israel, shows

two etrogim (yellow citron)  at the base of a menorah. 

Nephrite Budda's Hand lemon, Ming Dinasty,

Let Proust have his madeleines. When I want a treat that evokes sunshine, secluded beaches, a green sea dotted with multicoloured sails, I will take lemon curd. Deliciously tart, versatile, and easy to prepare, this ambrosial concoction probably originated in Elizabethan England. It is not difficult for me to imagine great batches  of it bubbling away in  the very kitchen of the Virgin Queen. She was, after all, a lover of preserves and dulcets.
One does not have to be royal in order to indulge in lemon curd.  Sugar is no longer the luxury it  was in the 16th. century and neither are lemons. The latter are abundant and fairly  inexpensive at this time the year. One can choose less common varieties of lemon as the main ingredient for curd-- Meyer ons, hand of Buddha or the yellow lemon Israels call etrog. I suspect that  yuzu would also work. I will lnow come autumn, if a neighbour decides to ell some of her harvest. Meantime I go with what is available at the local supermarket--Lisbon lemons, I believe. I wash them thoroughly, remove enough zest to fill a tablespoon,  squeeze enough--six or seven, depending on size-- to get three quarters of a cup of juice, add eggs, butter and sugar and cook in an enamelled pot at medium heat  for six minutes. That's it. The recipe yields twelve ounces of curd that  can be used as filling for cookies, as a spread for scones, toast, biscotti. Heck, it is good enough to hold together two Proustian madeleines.


PERFECT LEMON CURD
 Tawny at www.allrecipes.com

• 3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, cubed

Directions

1. In a 2 quart saucepan, combine lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, eggs, and butter. Cook over medium-low heat until thick enough to hold marks from whisk, and first bubble appears on surface, about 6 minutes.

AGATHA CHRISTIE'S LEMON

As Lemon Week winds down, with nary a lemon related craft project, Agatha Christie's Miss Lemon, Poirot's efficient secretary comes to mind. It is her destiny to play  no larger role in Poirot's daily life than that of appointment keeper and fetcher of tisannes.Her greatest ambition is to come up with  up with the perfect filing system. While she  she waits for inspiration, her routine is only interrupted by  Poirot and and his sidekick  Arthur Hastings' s adventures.
 I had  hoped  to run this blog in Miss Lemon's minimalist manner. That is, I would fetch tea and dream of the perfect filing system while  talented artists and artisans discussed their work ad shared projects.   It is too early in the game to know whether this is a good plan. Judging from Lemon Week, I need to to be a bit more aggressive in my search for guest bloggers.  For the moment, I offer a couple of recipes for lemony delights. The first, Preserved Lemons--lemons pickled in salt-- is embarassingly simple. The glorious part only becomes apparent when one dds the results to other dishes, such as an eggplant, tomato, onion and cheese casserole.Then it packs terrific olfactory and gustory punch--think sunshine, blue skies, green seas and tropical flowers in a spoon.

PRESERVED LEMONS
6 lemons, scrubbed and seeded
1 cup of lemon juice
1 cup of kosher salt

Sterilyse a canning jar. Fill it with alternate layers of lemons and kosher. Add lemon juice. Seal jar and let it sit for a day or two, turning it upside down, occasionally. Store in the refrigerator for three weeks before using the pickled lemons. Remove pulp before use. Pickles will keep for up to six months.


Tomorrow I will post a recipe for lemon curd, which my daughter used with great success as  filler for Linzer cookies and as a topping for scones.