A lot of little valentines have tumbled through this studio of mine the past few weeks. It’s always a joy for me to make cards and maybe it’s even a bit of an extra thrill to make tiny ones and package them up all sweet. A lot of paper hearts were punched. This pretty paper confetti was designed to sprinkle throughout each small glassine envelope that houses a valentine. It makes me giddy to think of all the little ones out there exchanging fishy and octopus valentines today with little paper hearts sprinkling all around. Aside from shop orders, family valentines were also made and mailed. I really cherish any opportunity to send mail. It’s a bonus if I get to put my babe’s photos on it too.
And I can’t think about mail without thinking about my little penpal. Every letter starts off with a pet name. Our pet names for each other have run the gamut in our 14 years of weekly (more or less…) letters. I really like whiskerlicious. Muffin-top is good too. Over the years we’ve come up with some delightfully silly equations to arrive at suitable pet names. Becca’s equation is to take a household object and add something soft: bucket + fluff = bucket fluff. The equation that I often use is: something sweet + a body part. This results in the wonderfully ridiculous cupcake-head and honey-bum. My favorite is pie face. Use your discretion, of course. Not everyone thinks it is darling to be called candy-butt, though Becca, I suspect, would quite like it. And obviously, despite it’s being a household object, never use the word toilet with anything.
Valentine’s Day is such a perfect opportunity to exercise a pet name equation, but really any day will do. If you’re so inspired today, pick up a pen and write a little note to a special spoon-pillow or sugar-foot. It will make you feel good, it will make a friend feel good, and it’s easy as pie. Or pie face.
deep blue sea 
