Valentines + Prints in the Shop!
Gay skeletons + sexy demons, all you could ever want in a holiday! ❤️🔥
This year I made Valentines! And they’re for sale in the shop here! They ship within 24 hours, so they should arrive with plenty of time for you to personalize them and send them out to whoever you fancy. If you’re a paid subscriber, watch your inbox for a discount code of 10% off.
Here are the four designs I came up with this year, which I delighteth in greatly:
You can buy them individually or purchase a multi-pack and get all 4. They come with these darling red self-adhesive envelopes. Check them out here.
I have always loved making valentines. The wild abundance of puns and the generous spattering of red makes my gory little heart go pitter-pat. I typically felt let down by the commercially available valentines in my childhood, so once the store-bought Aladdin/Lion King/Pocahontas cards had been addressed to everyone in my class (a requirement in most elementary schools here in the US) I often hand drew personalized cards for my friends and siblings on the side.
I wish I still had them. I remember one valentine in particular that described the death of St. Valentine in graphic detail—he was supposedly clubbed to a pulp and beheaded on the orders of the appropriately named Claudius Gothicus for evangelizing too hard in Rome.
The story gets even better. An embellishment to the tale asserted that, before his execution, Valentine wrote a letter signed “from your Valentine” to the daughter of one of his supporters. This lovely little legend is where we get the concept of exchanging valentines. There’s no evidence that this actually happened (the letter, if real, did not survive) but it’s a lovely, bloody bookend to the card-giving tradition we enjoy today.
And since we’re on the subject of gothic lovers, I also have two new romantic prints available in the shop, both of them a riff on the multiple archaeological discoveries of skeletons found in eternal embrace.
The first piece is based on the Hasanlu Lovers, a pair of human remains found at the Hasanlu archaeological site in Iran. In around 800 BCE, the city of Hasanlu, located in north-western Iran, was destroyed by an unknown invader and inhabitants were slain and left where they fell. These lovers were discovered by a team of archaeologists in 1973, and archaeological evidence suggests the two skeletons are male.
Gay skeleton lovers? I swoon.
The next is perhaps a more famous pair, the Lovers of Valdaro, a pair of human skeletons that were buried 6,000 years ago. They were discovered in a Neolithic tomb in San Giorgio near Mantua, Italy, in 2007. The two were buried face to face with their arms around each other, never to part. Many of their bones were crushed, but their embrace was preserved forever.
I love how, in their original positions, their limbs are just a jumble of intertwined bones—what an ideal way to spend eternity.
Both these designs are part of my ongoing quarterly prints series. Each quarter I make a limited number of prints, sign and number them, and make them available in the shop until they sell out. Doing this quarterly gives me some accountability to create, but it’s limited enough to keep me from burning out on printmaking. And of course, it gives you guys something cute and spooky to hang in your homes and offices and secret hideouts.
I also have a tier of subscribers (my Founding Tier) who get my prints sent to them automatically. If you’re interested, you can subscribe here. You can even upgrade to this tier if you’re already a monthly/annual subscriber. It amounts to around 20% off per print (shipping is included), and you get first pick of all my designs, so you never have to worry about them selling out. You can purchase subscriptions for yourself, or you can gift a subscription (of any level) to your Valentine, your mother, your sibling, your dog, etc… so go check out gift options if you’re interested:
Thank you for being here, for supporting my art and listening to these stories. I hope you like these Valentines, even if you’re not the lovey-dovey type. I still love and dove all over you.
All my lovin,
💀Becca Lee, Haunted Librarian💀