Valentine Craft

Have I ever mentioned that I'm terrible at admitting that I've changed my mind?  I'm not terrible at actually changing my mind, given a convincing, logical argument, but fessing up to it is not my forte.  It never has been either.  The time I spent weeks sitting in my closet reading the Harry Potter series because I didn't want to admit that it was not in fact a dumb book about wizards comes to mind.

Lo and behold, it's happened again.  Bunting has been popular to say the least in the crafting world for a while now, at least since last spring perhaps longer, and it's only now that I'm willing to admit that my first instinct when I see bunting isn't "ick."  I have no idea why I changed my mind, but the Christmas star bunting I made back in December just tickles my fancy.

So, this brings us to decorating for Valentine's Day.  I didn't decorate because I'm one of those crazy/awesome new house decor at each holiday kind of people, but because our house is drab and needed some color.  The holiday simply offered a good color theme.

I got the idea for this stained glass hearts craft from Flower Patch Farmgirl and I just knew I had to try it out.

This started with me spending some quality time with the vegetable peeler.  Apparently, a pencil sharpener might have been more practical, but these were big crayons, and I'm working with limited craft goods.  After shredding all of the crayon colors I wanted, the rest was cake.  The only trick was to make sure not to put too much crayon shavings down because I wanted the light to shine through.  It was easy enough to move the crayon goo around between the wax paper sheets while using the iron to melt them.  Sadly, this was the first time I'd used our iron and ironing board.  If they hadn't been provided we really wouldn't miss them, but at least they've earned their keep now!

I used my two hole punch (there aren't three hole punches here and all the binders either have 2 or 4 rings in them) to put holes in the cut out hearts and then threaded and taped them to some red sewing thread.

Close up of the hearts strung across our living room windows.

I made some small hearts from the scrap pieces so I taped those to the thread instead of hole punching them.

The railing overlooking the living room.  The light comes through the hearts in the middle of the day and it does a good imitation of stained glass.

The hearts finally replaced the Christmas garland in the study.  The only problem I had with the hearts was some cracking around the edges where I cut out the shapes.  I suppose you could iron the hearts again to reseal the edges, but I didn't think it was necessary.

I can't wait until next year, because I've seen some really cute crafts out there that I just don't have the supplies to do over here!  Between the new paintings and these new decorations, I think the apartment is definitely starting to look more cheery and personal.