Van Gogh Valentines!

hello again!
i am back from a long summer of recovery. the three months after school were filled with much sleep food and video streaming. it felt so good not doing something that i mostly did not feel guilty. that being said i love doing stuff and making stuff. sometime around the second week of august i woke up from my summer slumber and hit the ground running.

I have alley art fest to get ready for and not so much time to do so!

alley art fest also presents an opportunity to debut one of my college daydream creations: Van Gogh Valentines!

a chocolate ear wrapped in bloody newspaper presented as a gift. based on the story of vincent van gogh and his ear cutting incident in which he gave the severed ear to a ms.rachel, a prostitute he “knew”.

hence, it seems appropriate it would be a good valentines day gift (or christmas gift since the whole ordeal happened a couple of days before christmas).

wow! holiday stress!

yum! chocolate ear!

if you would like to experience a van gogh valentine for yourself or give one to a loved one, i have created a very limited supply to be sold at alley art fest this upcoming saturday in aurora, il.

making these guys was very fun experience that combines my love of packaging, graphic design, product development, diy and chocolate but the productions of these guys by one girl is…impractical!

on the business side of things, if they do take off and people do like them as much as i do then i will take further action on contacting a chocolatier and getting these out to those in need of chocolate ears. in the mean time i will take seasonal orders for valentines day 2015 and maybe christmas. feel free to contact me if you are interested. i will probably post more on that subject and i develop this project further along with my other art.

in the meantime, here’s a walk through through my journey in creating Van Gogh Valentines!

the idea came around my junior year at the academy.

a few friends were talking about a bake sale for a school club and quickly my mind went racing with thinking up something i could contribute. as usual i wanted to make something clever out, of the ordinary and generally delightful. sorta like those cake eggs i made years ago, but more practical when opening them…and in the chaos of the neurons making connections in my brain the idea of Van Gogh Valentines happened!

there was a quite a bit of scheming and designing. i even went so far as to work on my own chocolate ear model and bought the silicone to create a mold. sadly food grade silicone is pretty expensive and i only have one ear mold carved. the whole process of making my own mold tray was a bit out of my hands at the moment. plus, with school being school the project went to the bottom of the work queue after a few weeks.

jump to a couple of weeks ago when out of the blue i decided to revisit the project!

one morning i just researched chocolate making, found some nice candy ear molds that fit my general idea and ordered the best chocolate i could buy with my sad budget (ghirardelli).

that same day i started redeveloping the logo.

i resolved to use my fanciest attempt at handwriting and calligraphy ear drawing (based on van goghs self portraits of course) and then combined it with handpainted watercolour stains.

the newspaper packaging itself was a huge time consuming event. the problem was trying to develop something that was practical to make, elegant and a graceful experience when opening. the final solution was a simple envelope.

the contents of the valentine also had to explain the joke for those not so familiar with the story.

creating the chocolate ears was simple enough, but as much as i try to be good at everything, working with chocolate is not one of them! ill leave that to the chocolatiers.

i know paper, they know chocolate.