With all the amazing Valentine's Day DIY tutorials I've been seeing online, I've been feeling pretty inspired to make something...but not inspired enough to go crazy and turn my living room wall into a fringe heart photobooth backdrop. More like inspired enough to make something that doesn't require me to buy anything new...and can be made during a night of watching mindless prime time TV. So this past week I grabbed a roll of parchment paper, a pair of scissors, some colored pencils, a sewing needle and string, and turned on the TV to watch the reality show disaster known as The Bachelor (my favorite show to hate-watch).
After two hours and a rose ceremony, here is what I came up with......
This garland is easy to make, scalable (can make a little one or a super long one), and you can decorate it any way you want! I used colored pencils and some gold glitter but you could use a regular pencil or Sharpie to draw dots or stripes, and it would look equally awesome.
Anyway if you want to make one here's what you do...
Using the "folded paper in half/draw half a heart" technique you learned in first grade, make a heart that is about 1.5"-2" wide and tall to use as your tracer. I used a piece of scrap paper to make mine but you can use parchment paper.
Take a piece of parchment paper that's about 2 feet long and scribble all over half of your paper with colored pencil, Sharpie markers, crayons, or regular old pencil. Leave the other half of the paper blank.
Trace your hearts and cut them out. I suggest cutting out 17-2o hearts (I used 17 for my garland). Half of the hearts I cut out were white and the other half were scribble scrabble hearts. That way I could alternate white and red hearts in my garland!
Sew two hearts together at the top corners of the heart and make a double stitch and double knot your stitch before cutting the string. I made sure all my scribble hearts were sewn on top of the white ones for consistency.
After you are done sewing all your hearts together, add 8-12 inches of string on each end (attach using same double stitch technique from Step 4). I added string so that my garland was longer and it gave me more flexibility with hanging it.
This last step is optional. I decided to add some sparkle to my heart. Using Mod Podge glue and superfine gold glitter, I painted some glue dots on the white hearts, painted some scribble lines on the red hearts, and sprinkled gold glitter on them. If you do add glitter with glue, make sure you sprinkle the glitter soon after you apply the glue before the glue dries!
There are a few nights left of good prime time TV to make paper heart garlands before Valentine's Day so if you decide to make one please share your photos!!! I'd love to see how they turn out! You can share them by posting to my Facebook page, by emailing your picture to SparkleMotionDecor@gmail.com, tweeting your photo to @SparkleMoDecor, or pinning your photo with #SparkleMotionDecor in the caption.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's Day and is able to find some time to do something or spend time with someone you love!