It’s weird! I never really decorate for Valentines! I usually just cook a nice dinner , light a few candles, watch a romantic movie, buy my hubby a little special gift and a card . I’m sure you get the drift! I like to just create a nice atmosphere and that’s really about it for Valentine’s Day for me!!

This month our host Terrie from  @decorateandmorewithtip decided that since this challenge is in February let’s do something hearts 🙂 literally anything hearts from diy to food , anything at all!! And as usual all my blogging buddies links are below, so you have to check them out!!

So now all of a sudden I’m liking the valentines decor but I don’t have anything that’s valentine teamed in my home except for a few hearts that’s permanently scattered through out the house all year long!!

How and ever all I seem to want to do now is valentine themed stuff so this will be my very first hearts/valentines diy project!!

But I’m keeping it simple…

The Challenge!

I had idea what I was going to do until I spotted all these little things all over my garden and street!!

I have absolutely no idea what you call these but I’m sure they came from either one of the trees in my neighbours yard or in the middle of the verge outside my house.

It’s hard to explain the texture because they feel like little pieces of wood!! I’m sure the cars driving by would have laughed and wondered what the hec I was doing picking up these pieces of so called rubbish , but I didn’t see rubbish I only saw beauty and a project

So here we go!

These are the pieces.

So I get an old bucket and wash them in soapy water! Oops you can see a leaf or two in there!!!

Then I rinsed them off to get all the suds and sand from them (Did I tell you I live on an Island ? Everything gets so sandy here because everything is built on sand)

After rinsing them I then had to leave them in the sun to dry off…

Ummm! They seemed to be much brighter looking since I washed them , which I like ..

I tried bleaching some as you can see below but it took a day and I didn’t want the cost of the bleach as this project is supposed to be money friendly! Plus I’m not sure if I truly like the bleached look for this particular project! (See below)

I had a diy wreath in my craft box which was given to me from a neighbour. It was one of those diy wreaths which came with little felt Christmas items. I put those away as I only needed the wreath and my local store had none in stock. It’s a little old and tacky but you want notice it when the project is completed…

When all the little wooden tree petals were completely dry I grabbed my glue gun and glue and just started to glue the petals onto the wreath one by one…

I glued them in bunches of fours and fives starting at the top , then the bottom and moving into the sides then started filling in the gaps so it would all look evened out..

I then started to fill in the outside and inside if the wreath making sure I filled in all the gaps so you couldn’t see any white styrofoam!

I then used some red and cream stock card that I had on hand

I was going to use my new Cricut maker that I got for Christmas to cut out the hearts but decided to cut them by hand after all it is a diy project and I wanted to show how easy it is to cut the hearts by hand . It didn’t take too long. I just kept folding and drawing hearts and then hand cut the hearts out of the card.

I had some beige burlap ribbon that I used in a few other projects. I turn the wreath around do the back side of it was now facing me and just glued the burlap to the wreath so I could easily hang it.

I used 20 inches so I could double up on the burlap… I made sure I checked out the position I wanted it to hang before I glued the burlap to the back of the wreath.

You can cut your own desired length at all , what ever suited your space!!

At the back of the burlap I glued a small loop of twine right at the top so I could hang it straight.

I also so added a piece across the back of the wreath just for an added feature on Wreath! ( that was just a moment of inspiration, not planned at all lol! )

I turned it back around so it was facing me and then I added some love heart cut outs to the burlap!! First I just wanted simple red then I decided to add some smaller white in the middle and then I decided to put even smaller red on the white hearts so this was three layers of hearts . The smaller the hearts got, the harder they were to cut .. but perseverance is the key , if I can do it then anyone can!!!

Can you see how small that heart is compared to the others beside it? Yep! It’s pretty small…

I really wanted something very simple and I think this turned out exactly that way…

I then added some of the cut out hearts to the burlap, then randomly scattered the hearts around the whole wreath . I tried to make it as pretty as possible without going over board.

As you can see on the part that I’m using to hang the wreath, I put heart within a heart within a heart!!

Hearts galore!!! Lol!

And more hearts!

And even more hearts!!

I hope you liked the simplicity of this project . Anyone can do this! You can use card to make the petals or wood chippings or dried leaves!

Finished project!

Things I used!

I just worked with what I had!

Sissors

Pen or pencil

Glue gun and glue

Red twine

Burlap ribbon

Red and white card stock

Wreath ( styrofoam )

Wood petals or wood chippings

Happy project making peeps!

Be sure to check out all my blogging buddies below and see what they came up with for their heart challenge projects, as usual you want be disappointed!!

Have a great day all!

Teresa

https://barnhousemess.wordpress.com/2020/02/03/monthly-diy-hearts/

Barn House Mess