An Anti-Valentine’s Day Round-Up

Valentine the Voodoo Pincushion

Are you spending Valentine’s Day alone after a nasty break-up? Then why not exact your revenge on that no good so-and-so with a little old-fashioned voodoo? Valentine the Voodoo Pincushion is the perfect outlet for all sorts of frustrations, even if you haven’t been spurned by a lover. With a little bit of felt, thread, stuffing, and crafty know-how, you can have your very own voodoo doll to puncture to your heart’s content. Full instructions are included by Indie Spotting.

Bleeding Heart Cupcakes

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know how much we enjoy cupcakes over here at the Happy Seamstress (in fact, the last three round-ups included a cupcake recipe), so it’ll come as no surprise that we’re going to list one here. However, instead of your traditionally pink-frosted heart-shaped confection, this recipe from yumsugar allows you to make an anatomically correct heart cupcake, complete with oozing strawberry jam blood.

Anti-Valentine Cards

Do you feel that the messages on the cards you buy in the store don’t fully convey the range of your feelings for this holiday? How about printing out one of these free Anti-Valentine Cards by me(ish) for someone you care about (or hate, as the case might be)? They cover the whole range from understated to painfully direct with messages like “Happy unimaginative, consumerist-oriented and entirely arbitrary, manipulative and shallow interpretation of romance day”, and the less subtle “Valentine’s Day Sucks”.

Bleeding Heart Martini

This next recipe comes from Martha Stewart Living, of all places. Originally intended as a Halloween cocktail, the Bleeding Heart Martini is a fun twist on your traditional gin and vermouth martini with the addition of a pickled baby beet, which lends the drink a bloody hue. It would make a great cocktail to serve at an Anti-Valentine’s Day party, or simply to drink alone during a quiet night at home.

You can also find a fairly comprehensive list of other delicious cocktails to serve on this anti-holiday at Latina (you just have to scroll past the lovey-dovey Valentine’s Day-themed drinks). My personal favourite is “Adios Motherf-er”, which contains vodka, tequila, rum, and gin!

Grouchy Love Bug

For the folks who aren’t a fan of Valentine’s Day, but can still appreciate a little cuteness in their lives, you can make some chocolate-strawberry grouchy love bugs with little “Love Stinks!” signs. Wing-It Vegan offers extremely comprehensive instructions on how to dip your strawberries in chocolate, make and attach those little antennae, and decorate your love bugs. I would skip the cutesy “I (heart) U” bugs, however, and make a whole army of frowning grouchy anti-love bugs.

Dalek Embroidery

If you’re feeling a little bit nerdy, you might want to try your hand at stitching this adorable scene of a Dalek (from Dr. Who) attempting to exterminate a balloon heart. Sarah from Trying to Enjoy Life based this embroidery on an anti-Valentine sketch (which, unfortunately, is not linked from the post). It would look really fantastic in a cute frame!

Bleeding impaled heart ornaments

Continuing with the hand-stitched theme, why not make yourself some of these felt bleeding heart ornaments. Katie Canavan of Under the Red Umbrella has only posted the pictures of her creations without instructions, but I think that anyone with some basic stitching skills would be able to reproduce these without too much hassle. However, if you’re feeling lazy and would rather support an all-around crafty lady, you can also buy some from her Etsy shop. These would look great hung on a vase full of dead branches… sort of like an Anti-Valentine’s Tree!

Cupid Shot in the Back cake

For those of you with awesome cake decorating skills, and an extreme dedication to truly hating Valentine’s Day, you might want to try to replicate this hysterical cake from Cake Central. It’s decorated with a fondant dead Cupid who was just shot in the back by one of his own arrows. The expired cherub is surrounded by flames, just in case it wasn’t painfully obvious that the baker isn’t a fan of this holiday. And just to make it even more sacrilicious, it’s made from Devil’s food cake with chocolate cream filling.

I hate Valentine’s Day

Finally, if you’re willing to go all the way and make Anti-Valentine’s Day a permanent fixture in your life, you might as well pick up a copy of I Hate Valentine’s Day (on Amazon or Barnes & Noble) by Bennett Madison. It’s a humorous guide to surviving the schmaltziest day of the year, whether you’re single or in a relationship. You’ll learn how to avoid the people and places who tend to make the holiday that much more unbearable, how to celebrate the holiday in alternative ways, and even how to score a last-minute date. And really, at just a couple of bucks, this book is a steal.