Yarn "Love" Letters

I stumbled on an amazing new blog - My Sister's Suitcase.  I love the crafts they've done so far and see this as a top blog I follow!

They made these awesome yarn letters for Valentine's Day.  I have a ton of yarn in the garage - the benefit of having a sister that crochets like crazy and gives me most of her left over yarn from her finished projects.  So I dug around for a while and found 3 colors that would give this Ombre effect - red, fuschia, and light pink.

**Be sure to check out the photos of the original - my fuzzy phone picture doesn't do it justice.

I had trouble with the "O" since it was curved and not straight like the others.  I'm still not happy that the yarn lines aren't all horizontal.  Believe me, I tried, but had too many issues, so I just ended up doing it in the round way like the example.  I love how they turned out and am excited to have a larger decoration.  Most of my Valentine's Day stuff is small, and stacked the way this is, it's about 16 inches tall.

Valentine's Stacker

Here's my Valentine's Day Stacker...

pic from my phone, so the colors are a bit brighter than actual colors.  But I opted to go with all pink shades of paper instead of red - I love the middle paper - it's actually a raspberry sherbet color...not neon like the pic is showing.  I also made a glitter heart for the top stacker ... cause glitter is just fun!

Here's the fonts I used:
Love - Smiley Monster
Hugs & Kisses - Thinking of You
Be My Valentine - O{Photo} Shoot!

Heart Garland and Pillow Wrap

I decided I wanted a heart garland a couple weeks ago, so I dug through my felt stash and cut out a ton of little hearts.  I'm sure I cut out more than I used but my kids kept running away with them as I cut them, so I'm still finding more scattered around the house as the days go by.

After making the subway art pillow, I felt I needed something else on my other pillows.

I also made a wrap for my couch pillow.  My couch pillows are black, so I figured it was a good background to go with a wrap of hearts.  I will probably unstitch them and sew them onto a ribbon for next year though.  Right now, they are just tied together with the ends of the thread but it won't stay tight, so I'll probably sew them to a ribbon to be able to keep it tied on.  But I just did a fun decorative stitch as I fed the hearts through the sewing machine - which will make it trickier to pick out later :)
                         

Words of Love

I knew this was going on my to do list when I saw it.  It's kindof addicting to make these.  I had some standard red yarn and some fuzzy pink yarn on hand, so I decided to make 2 of them.  I can't decide which one I like better.  Last night, I liked the red one best, but this morning while I was taking pictures of them, the pink switched to my favorite. 

I don't really like them next to eachother - I think that's why I don't like the red as much today...it's overshadowed by the pink one, so I will definately put them in separate rooms/areas so I can enjoy both instead of comparing them.

She had some wire from a hardware store, but I used floral wire.

Valentine's Pillow

I was on One Pretty Thing last week, browsing through the Valentine's Roundup posts and came across this idea at Dittle Dattle.  I pretty much stopped what I was doing and made it right then and there.  And the awesome thing is she made the design into an SVG file (here) that you can import into your Cricut if you have the SCAL software.  I don't know if you can use it other ways, but this worked for me and I was so happy that I didn't have to try and replicate it - all the hard work is done!! 

I didn't have silver fabric paint, so I used black - and I like how it turned out.  I'm not a fan of the bow, but it looked like it was missing something if I just did a band of the ribbon.  I may have to coax my mom to use her machine and embroider "love" on a ribbon for me like the example did.  But until then, I just keep fixing the bow since my husband thinks a pretty pillow is one to lean on - silly man.  Pretty pillows aren't for touching.  I thought my kids would be the ones destroying the bow, but I was wrong.

I didn't want to have to store a whole pillow in my valentine's box for the rest of the year, so I just made a removable pillow cover for one of my everyday couch pillows.  That way, I only have to store the cover - much easier!  I have always referred to this tutorial when making a removable pillow cover.  They are super simple to make, but it helped getting dimensions from someone.

Valentine's Wreath

These type of wreaths are everywhere in blogland.  I initially saw it last year in January/February, but I can't remember where I saw it.  Now they are all over the place...  I wanted to make this heart one last year, but for some reason, I didn't.  So I made it this year.  It's made out of felt circles and then folded into quarters and pinned to the foam wreath form.

I made a pink circle wreath in the same manner last year for spring time...

 And then I made one out of felt stars for 4th of July last year (definately my favorite so far)...

Valentine's Blocks

I knew I was going to make these the second I saw them.  Pretty much anything from Brown Paper Packages makes it to my "to-do-list"

I had left over 4x4 posts from the Seasonal Word Blocks, and didn't know what I was going to do with them...

I LOVE them!!!

Burlap Heart Wreath

Once I saw this idea, I had to make one. I've been seeing burlap projects everywhere and just assumed that burlap fabric was expensive. Boy was I wrong. It was only $2.99/yard at Jo-Anns. And that was the regular price. So I used one of my 40% off coupons and 1 yard of the red burlap was under $2. And I was so excited to find RED burlap.

I don't have any sturdy wire to use as the frame, so i shaped a wire hanger into a heart and strung the burlap strips on from there. I used 8 strips (2.5" wide) to make this wreath. But I had bought a yard, not sure how much I was going to need. That left me with about 16" extra burlap. So I cut 8 more strips at 2" wide each and made a 2nd wreath for my sister. So 2 wreaths for $1.97 - can't beat that!

When the fabric lady was cutting the burlap for me, she did something different than just cut at the yard mark. She made a slit and then pulled one of the strings out - giving her an even guide to cut on. I thought that was genious - so I used that same trick to get even 2.5" strips when I cut it up.

First, make a slit with the scissors and then pull a string at the slit so that the burlap gathers - see photo.

Then when that string is out, you have an easy guide to cut along so your strips are even. I LOVE this idea! So there you go - a trick to cutting burlap strips . . . if you didn't already know it. :)

Vinyl Heart Plate

I made this vinyl plate last year . . . I cut out the white vinyl on my cricut and applied it to a sparkly heart plate I found at Target last year. I love plates with vinyl on them displayed on the mantle at holidays. My favorite one I've made is my St. Patrick's Day one . . . I'll post that in a few weeks - once it's closer to St. Patrick's Day.

Valentine's Day Garland

I saw a cute garland on Naptime Journal that I liked. I have an 8' wide opening from the dining room into the living room that I wanted the garland to go on. She used pink - but that didn't match my decor in the house, so I stuck with white, black, and red. But I think one out of just pink - a few different shades - would be adorable.
I bought 2 sheets each of black, white, and red felt. I used red glitter felt - but it's hard to capture that in the picture. I found cookie cutters and traced them onto cardboard to get templates of the circle and heart shapes. And then I used spray adhesive to put the hearts on the circles. But beware - that spray adhesive is a beast to get off your hands. I tried using nail polish remover and that didn't help much; I guess I shellacked my fingers pretty good.

I hand stitched some black embroidery floss around the white circles to add a little to those ones since there wasn't the glitter detail there. Since it's hanging in a walkway, I also cut out hearts for the back side as well, so there are hearts on both sides of the circles.