DesignsandEvents: Making Hearts for Valentine's Day

Hey, there! We got walloped here in my town of Groton, Massachusetts yesterday with 10-12" of snow. Being housebound allowed me to work on some crafts that I was hoping to do before Valentine's Day so, I guess it was a good thing.

I want to share with you the easy and inexpensive different kinds of hearts I created over the past few days. This is something you can easily do with your kids and grandkids. They and you will have a blast!

For the past few years I have enjoyed making a Valentine garland in February. Last year I made one for puppy lovers. You can see it here if you would like. With that tradition in mind I started out with these yarn-wrapped hearts.

They are quite easy to make. You simply cut hearts out of cardboard, an old Amazon box will do. I felt the smaller the hearts were, maybe 2" or so tall, would work best for this but, you can try it with any size you'd like. Grab some yarn (mine was from Dollar Tree) and start wrapping in a random pattern. The hardest part of this craft is making sure you cover the point of the heart without losing its pointed distinction. I cut an inch of yarn at the end of the wrapping and threaded it through the back of the heart to secure the yarn.

I covered these three hearts using the one skein and had plenty of yarn left over, as you can see above.

Honestly, the yarn-covered hearts took no time at all to make. I am still trying to figure out how to best make them into a garland but, I will do that pretty soon. My daughter already requested that I give it to her ASAP :).

I, then, decided to try my hand at decorated cardboard hearts. I cut hearts in two different sizes. You can't really tell from the photos above and below but, the top hearts are slightly smaller than the ones below. Some of them I lightly painted with cream acrylic paint. It dried in a jiffy! The corrugation of the cardboard stands out when painted.

Once the hearts were cut, I set out to find embellishments to decorate them. I have all kinds of "stuff" around the house that really helped with this project but, I also purchased a few things to make sure the final product was what I had in mind.

I have already mentioned that I purchased the yarn at Dollar Tree. I also purchased these cupcake toppers ↓ at Michael's. The roses were the perfect size and shape for what I had in mind.

I started with one of the larger painted hearts. I used twine wrapped a few times around the middle of the heart horizontally to start. I made a loop bow and hot-glued it to the middle of the heart also.

I also glued some leaves in the center of the heart. Some of the leaves I placed with the wrong side out because I liked the color of the underneath leaf better for this project.

Next, I glued three flowers in different colors to the center of the heart.

The final step was to glue a twine "hanger" at the top.

From there I decorated each of the cardboard hearts in various ways, going wherever my imagination took me~

Originally, I wanted to line this one with aged-looking print from a paperback book. However, none of the books I had were large enough to cover the large heart so, I found some cardstock I liked and went from there.

I made a rosette from some unusual red ribbon I had lying around. It is not perfect but, I still like it.

The leaves came from old silk flowers I had saved.

I did use a tiny bit of book printing to make a small heart. Over that I placed a red heart that I cut out of some Valentine ribbon I also found in my stash. I hand wrote LOVE on the mini heart with a felt-tip pen.

I almost forgot, I hot-glued the perimeter of the heart with another interesting twine-type ribbon that was also in my supplies. Be careful on this step. Try not to get burned!

This heart is probably more sophisticated than one children would make but, any bobbles and beads would work for kids, not to mention simple cut-out hearts. Kids love doing that! Valentine cards could work, as well.

I had a few smaller cardboard hearts left and I still wanted to use book print with at least one of them. I found an old college workbook that would be "OK". The topic of the workbook was very boring but, the writing produced the look I was going for...pretty much.

These were the hearts I came up with ↓~

On this one, note the double edging.

This one was supposed to be rustic and simple.

I think this one is my least favorite. I thought it would come out cooler than it did :/.

I really enjoyed making these hearts. If you are a crafter, I am sure you have plenty of embellishments you can use to make your own hearts. If not, the supplies I used here are quite inexpensive. I am sure you will make something amazing!