Heart Love - A garland

With Valentines Day fast approaching, I thought I'd share a quick and easy decor item that even the most novice of crafter can create. All you need is a couple of punches and a sewing machine. If you have a sewing machine and have yet to try it on a scrapbook layout, this project is one to try. You can't mess up!

Got tumblr? Lisa recently introduced me to Tumblr and I can't stop playing with this site. It's not a blog. It's basically a place to store images and links to beautiful and inspiring things throughout the internet. This has made things much more organized for me, and really inspiring too. My tumblr page is here. I have changed my theme a couple of times, I'm still trying to determine which I like the best, but I love how easy it is to put pretty things all in one place.

The reason I bring up Tumblr is because I've been seeing a lot of beautiful images that would make a great home decor item there. I have loved the idea of these images since I first saw this on Etsy a few months ago (that Debee Campos is so darn talented).

Recently I've been seeing images like these:

and I decided to try it myself. I grabbed a couple of heart punches in different sizes and some pretty paper from my stash, and punched a pile of hearts while watching the Bachelor last night (SEND Vienna home!!!!, lol):

and then I got out my sewing machine and some pink thread, and started feeding them in.

I kept the foot moving the whole time and just slowly fed the hearts through. I didn't worry about shape, size, or color, or even how close they were to each other, I just kept going.

I liked it when two of them sewed together, and I liked a bit of length between them too. The key to the space between the hearts is to not let it go for too long or you risk your machine jamming up. It really wants to sew on something.

After I was finished I had a couple of adorable garlands that I strung up in the girls' room. They are going to be excited to see them when they get home from school today.

A project like this is a great way to create some fun homespun home decor, and also a great way to use up that stash. A couple of the prints I used were just small bits left in old Studio Calico kits that I couldn't bear to throw away.

Edited to add: I used both single and double sided patterned paper in this garland. I did not spend time adhering hearts together. You can see on the closeup shot that one of my hearts was trimmed near the paper description. woops! But it makes it more imperfect which is perfectly homespun. :)

Have a great day! Davinie