One World One Heart Update

Hello, It is still Passover for me so I scheduled this post for you. I thought you might enjoy an update on my OWOH goings on. If you remember I got in on this event the last week (actually 9 days before it ended), so visiting all those blogs was like a Internet marathon and I still have not gotten to all of them, but I will! I decided, (because I always over-do), to have nine winners. I could have just given any of my completed pieces of art work but in the spirit of the event, that of coming together, sharing, learning about and meeting other artists I wanted my offerings to be special.

So I had a mystery giveaway, which turned into a custom giveaway. I decided that I wanted to make a special something for each winner. I had visited their blogs, and some had shops so I visited them, read profiles and website and then wrote to each one and told them that I wanted to make something special for each of them and would they share a bit more about themselves with me that I may not be able to find on their blogs or elsewhere. And they all were very happy to share in the spirit of this event. I was overwhelmed learning about all these fabulous women from around the globe. There were many things we had in common but I was also enthralled by our differences. The drawing gave me winners from here in the US to Canada, Finland, Scotland, Israel and all the way to New Zealand . I was thrilled to be able to connect with these talented ladies that I most probably would never have met otherwise.


But I knew it was going to take some time to make something special for each winner and I didn't want them to think I'd forgotten them so I decided to make a little something for each of them to remember the event by. What I came up with I especially liked because it allowed me to be eco-friendly at the same time. Since the event was called One World One Heart I thought what better way to commemorate this event than to make hearts with the world? Well not really the world but a vintage world map I had. So that is what I did. I cut out the map and then cut it into sections that would fit on some card stock backing. I choose blue, like in the oceans and also gray and white card stock. I used gel medium to join them together and then put under a stack of books overnight to dry and to keep from curling.

The next day I took about 7 of my own heart stencils and went about tracing hearts on the map pieces, making sure to capture the countries my winners were from in at least one of them. I had a bit of trouble with New Zealand since I had two winners from there so one winner had to have a heart of the adjacent country of Australia. The US was a bit tricky too as my Canadian winner was located not far from the border of one of my US winners but at least they got the right country's!

To these country hearts I added others from around the world and many were ocean hearts too, even some of the south pole, Antarctica. Then it was time to take all these and to make a heart string for each one. I laid out the countries first and then had to balance the rest of the string by color and shape and size of the remaining hearts. That took some doing but they finally all fit. Now I needed a way to join them together and make it easy to hang. Good old fashioned cafe curtain rings were my answer and I just happened to have enough. I sewed most of them with heavy cotton thread and then tied the top to the curtain ring. On the bottom I had taped a little paper strip with the country name on it so I could keep them all straight. When I saw them all hanging there like that I knew that I needed a 'flapper' but not one made just of paper. So I thought about it for awhile and decided on making them from metal, aluminum which is lightweight and could catch a breeze easily.

So I set about making these. I got hubby to cut them out for me but I drilled them using my new dremel and bench vise. Then I stamped each one with the country of origin ( from me so the US) and then the country of the recipient winner. Then I textured each one all around with my ball peen hammer and sanded the edges to make them safe. Just making these tags took me two hours, the time was adding up.

Then I wanted to make a special envelope for them, so I made each one a recycled magazine envelope that I cut out and sewed together from six carefully selected pages. Then to make sure that they wouldn't be crushed in their travels I cut out squares of cardboard from cereal boxes and carefully taped each string around the square with the flapper charm on the left. These were then put inside small ziplock bags to protect from any moisture on their travels and then inserted into the envelopes. Each was then hand addressed with little notes to the mail lady (she loves my envelopes and sometimes makes my husband late for work because she has to look at each one and ogle over it!) on where to attach the postage and where on the envelope to attache the customs slip.

All in all when I finally finished them I realized it had taken me 4 days to complete with about 15 hours total to make them all. But I was pleased with the result and thought it would be a meaningful remembrance. Oh, part of that time was in writing to each one individually a fairly long note explaining what it was and that I was working on their special 'something' which would follow as soon as I had it ready. Now these were sent out on March 11th and I've heard back from about half of them that they received them, I hope the others got theirs as well. I have also begun to send out the special gifts and will update you in future posts about what they are as some who entered my drawing were interested in what the mystery may be! so look for those posts in the future. If you've missed any about the OWOH I always try to label them with that tag or you could just look up in the search bar at the top OWOH and you will see all the posts regarding it!

I sure did love this event and am kinda glad it is stretching out a bit, if there's one thing that can be extended and shared in this whole wide world it's love, don't you agree? :)

All nine envelopes Custom Addressed, and ready to mail out. Notice I found a use for all these CD stickers I had laying around, they make cool address labels!

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