Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! I hope you're celebrating today by eating lots of chocolate, going on a date or doing whatever you do to celebrate (or avoid) today.

I have a quick art project to share with you in honor of, well, our marriage, but we'll just pretend it's for Valentine's Day instead.

This year Drew and I decided not to give each other Valentine's Day gifts. We spent a little too much on Christmas gifts for each other (hello, XBox and Nook) and didn't see the need to get each other anything for a fake holiday.

But that didn't stop me from making a little something for our apartment when I saw this posted on Pinterest:

via

Cute idea for a Valentine's/anniversary/wedding gift, right? Luckily I still have a free trial of Adobe Fireworks on my computer right now, so I was able to take a Michigan map and recreate this for Drew and me to commemorate our Saginaw wedding.

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All I had to do was find a map of Michigan online, then erase all the lines and fill in the colors I wanted with Fireworks. Then I found a heart image (I changed the color on that, too), and I was done!

I'm sure a more knowledgeable person would have some really easy way to recreate this, but I took the tedious route by using the eraser tool and then zooming in to fill in any stray colored pixels. There has to be an easier/quicker way than that, right?

Anyway...

I originally had our names and wedding date on the picture, just like my inspiration artwork, but after showing it to Drew we decided we liked it better with no text. It's a bit more subtle this way, but still sentimental since it points out the location of our wedding on the map.

Now all I have to do is get the image printed somewhere like Kinko's and buy a frame. This should make a nice addition to the frame wall we're planning in our dining room.

Anyone else get crafty for Valentine's Day? Are you doing anything special today, or just having yourself a regular old Tuesday?