Crafty

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a crafty person. But I think with the two older rugrats becoming more aware of holidays it has made me excited to celebrate Valentine's Day this year. Thus, I spent an inordinate amount of time this week searching for tutorials on making Valentine wreaths. And gracious are there a lot of them! But the first one I found that seemed to be sort of at my level was this...



...from little birdie secrets. Her idea was fast, cheap & easy, my favorite combination. (Basically it consists of shoving squares of fabric into a foam heart using a pencil. No-skill-required-project here I come!) I have a few tips, if anyone wants to try it:

• She emphasized ensuring the fabric goes in the same way every time. I found that it didn't matter, sometimes I would have it front side going in, sometimes back side--both ways showed the front & back of the material equally. Did that make sense? If not, that's why I don't do craft posts.
• You know those little plastic sample cups they hand out at grocery stores with free samples? When it's something dry that doesn't make the cup gross I stick it in my bag to take home and stack them in my measuring cup drawer. They're the perfect size for kids to play with and for this project I grabbed one and dumped my glue in it. It was a great size instead of wasting a whole paper bowl and ensured that I used less glue. And it was free! Money-saving tip of the day. You're welcome.
• You can let your kids help! They may not be quite strong enough to push the pencil into the styrofoam by themselves but it doesn't matter much about glue getting everywhere, it will just help the fabric adhere in more spots to your foam heart. My kids thought it was great fun and wanted to help through the whole thing.
• I used a 9" heart form (from Hobby Lobby) and it was just under 3/4 yard of fabric to cover the front & sides of the heart.
• To finish, I just made a loop of ribbon and stapled it with a heavy duty stapler on the back. Worked like a charm.

And here is the final reveal...

...hanging on my front door!


And a close-up of the cute fabric (also from Hobby Lobby--LOVE that place) that has now left me in a conundrum. I hardly ever use my front door since I'm always taking the car which is in the garage...which means that I will never see my lovely wreath. Should I let visitors (& my husband, who does use the front door but who also could not possibly care less about holiday plumage) enjoy the fruits of my labor, or should I turn the wreath hanger around and stick it on the INSIDE of the door, where I can walk by and look at it all day?

What would you do?