Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Sunday & Valentine's Day 2010, all!

Since Valentine's projects have been going strong for a month and a half now (since right after Christmas?  I think the blog world is just as bad as the retail stores!) I wanted to recap for you the great Heart-Love-Valentine's projects Design-Aholic worked on this year!

1.  Fluffy Valentine's Fabric Heart Shaped Wreath

2.  Folded Felt Kissing Balls

3.  Valentine's Heart String Banner

4.  Candycane Hearts

UPDATE: Zoot-a-lo, I have meeeesed one!  (reference, Little Mermaid, crazy chef trying to get Sebastian.  Remember?  no?  Just me?  ok.)

5.  Heart heart heart framed art

I hope you all have a glorious day (long weekend, yea!) filled with love and family.  :)

Candy Cane Hearts

I made hearts today out of candy canes.

Let's back up.  I was cleaning the house, and dusting my shelves (as I get ready to revamp the decor on it after the dilemma party!) and found the silver compote from the holidays, and it was still filled with candy canes.  Yes, holiday candy canes.  What a waste, I thought at first... as I took them out of the compote, a few fell on the counter in a familiar shape, and the light bulb went on!

Why not turn these into cute hearts for a final Valentine's Day Project!

Super duper easy, and I figure someone else has already done this, but I'm reveling in the fact that I thought it up today...

I was able to make 13 hearts!  Just a dab of hotglue on each end of one of the candycanes.  Then, just sit the other candy on top in the cute heart shape.  :)

 

  

  

 

Then, place them around the house, and tie some with a pretty ribbon and give to your coworkers!  (or valentine's at school?!)

 

(yep!  That's part of the new decor from the designs dilemma post... stay tuned for more)

  

  

So, happy early Valentine's day everyone!  I hope you have a day full of love that day and moving forward :)

Pink Felt Kissing Balls

Here's another quick Valentine's Craft for you- Pink Felted Kissing balls!  Plus it's another one I teased you a few days back on this post.  :)

So in order to add to my Valentine's decor collection (which I'm just building up slowly with a few projects from this year, like this wreath) I tried my hand at the felt-fold-pin technique.

Totally not a new idea... as I'm sure you've seen this technique all over the place, I'll keep this post short and sweet.  Besides, the pictures are lacking this time, I don't know what was wrong with my camera!

I needed:

3, 1/4' cuts of fabric: I used light pink, hot pink, and red.  Hard to tell by the photos.
2, 4" styrofoam balls
dressmaker/straight pins
Circle Pattern, pencil, scissors

First, I traced out all my cirlces on the multiple colors of pink and red felt I purchased.  I probably had around ~40 of each color.  My circles were about 3 1/4 inch.

 

 

The next part is super simple!  Fold each circle in half, then in half again.  Take a straight pin, and push through the point at the end of the fold, and then just push into the styrofoam. 

 

  

I went around in a circle first, then filled in the halves similar to how I did in this Christmas ornament project.

I propped mine up on the shelf in my new office, and I love them!

 

 

Here are some other versions of this project that I'm sure you'll love too:

Via Etsy tutorial Tuesday, this orange lumbar type pillow.  Which, by the way, I absolutely love, and may make to go in the new living room one of these days:

From Design-Sponge, a super clean, white circular wreath:

From The Idea Room, the Valentine's Wreath Version:

So, with that, I wish you an early "Happy Valentine's Day".  :)

Fluffy Fabric Valentine's Wreath

Yesterday, hopefully you saw my post about phase 1 of setting up our new office/craft room.  If not, GO GO GO!

Anyway, if you did, you may have noticed that yes, I made another wreath.  What has blogging done to me?  I'm wreath crazy.  I swear they could make a group for us me.

This one shockingly took me some time to decide.

I had this, which was a good start:

But, what direction to go?  There are plenty of Valentine's wreath tutorials out there.  To be honest, I even tried a few out before I decided to go in one distinct direction.

First, there's this one found at The Idea Room:

...but I had already made my felt kissing balls, so I moved on...

I found a few other miscellaneous versions looking through Google Images (if you know what blogs they're from, I'd love to put a credit up!)

Cute, but too much work with all those yarn balls!  (Ha, if only I had known how long the version I DID make would take!)

I love the roses on the red wreath.  What else screams Valentine's Day than something like this?!   Still, I didn't have roses, and couldn't find a rose-out-of-fabric tutorial, so I moved on...

While not a wreath per se, I love the texture on this one, and I tried to figure out how I could do this to the wreath.  Unfortunately, I couldn't channel my inner girl scout, so I couldn't accomplish this one.

I love the texture on this bad boy.  Similar to the same issue I had on the rose wreath above.  sigh.

Totally cute with the scrapbook paper, but I had a heart shaped wreath, and I figured hearts on a heart wreath may make Z puke.  Or me.  I didn't want to temp fate.  

BUT, FINALLY, ALAS,
There's this version, from Little Birdie Secrets:

I knew this one could TOTALLY work!  So I started!

First off, I used much smaller squares than Little Birdie Secrets did.  I was making this, not a kid, so I figured I could deal with the time it would take.  And yes, it did take a lah-hot of time.

Here's my final version:

So,  the tutorial is below, even though you may have already read it online at the site I found it.

I used my Christmas present, a rotary cutter and mat, to power through cutting strips of my fabric, at about a 1" width.  I then cut those strips into squares that measured about 1" square.

Then, you use the point of a pencil, and some white glue.  First wrap the fabric around the point of the pencil, and then dab the point in the white glue.

Press the point of the pencil into the foam wreath, and it should stick.  The glue on the end also helps keep it in place.

That's about it.  Do this a few hundred times, over a few hours a few goods tunes and tv shows, and you've got yourself a snazzy wreath that's oh-so-fluffy, and perfect texture that you want!  :)

Next, use a 3M command hook to install on your new shelves in the office/craft room, and wah-la (sense my typing humor there.  Typing how I speak, you know)! 

(ok you can hang yours wherever you like...)

So, there you have it.  Oh, and if anyone knows about a "wreath's anonymous" meeting, you should probably let me know.

Happy Early Valentines Day to you and yours-