paper hearts a flutter

I feel like there is an awkward transition between Christmas and Valentines. There's a good 2-3 weeks where I don't feel like there is a season to decorate for. I was so excited when I felt it was ok to start putting a little more love in my home. I don't have very much heartsy decor so I made this

This is easy! It did take me a few days to complete because all I had was 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. It was also easy because I would just do a flower or two at a time, that helped with the jumping back and forth.

I got sick of the regular paper flowers I knew how to make, so I would just google images of paper flowers and find one that looked interesting and do it. I would probably make about 2 of each flower I found. Then just hot glued them onto a heart shape I cut out.

The paper I used for this was a stack of double sided 12x12 cardstock I bought from Joanns by Anna Griffin the Carmen Collection. I loved this because in this stack of 24 sheets you get gold foil paper and glitter paper!

Even the wreath had a slight transformation for the holiday. If you couldn't tell.... I just love this yarn so much. It just has such great texture!

felt floral pillow delight

You may have seen pillows similar to this. I first saw this at a popular home decor store and again at a cupcake place and knew I just had to have one. I didn't want to pay the somewhat $40 and the thought came to me, the one that usually comes to me when I don't want to pay the money but absolutely find myself wanting/needing something, "I can make that"
FYI these photos are from my phone so they aren't the greatest sorry

(here the flower is finished but I still need to sew to edges of the pillow together and add a zipper)

So here we go....
for the size pillow I did (20x20) I used about 1 yard felt (I got my felt from Pineneedles in Gardener Village originally ~$9 a yard but used a 30% off coupon)
thread to match + needle
good scissors or a rotary cutter

I am not so bright with a sewing machine so I mostly hand stitched this the only thing I used a sewing machine for was to sew the edges of the pillow.
I cut out a petal template from a regular sheet of paper. the size of each petal ended up being about 3"x2" I also used a cup to keep my 1/2 circle petal smooth.

I then used my rotary mat/cutter to cut out each petal. To speed up this step you can stack your felt to cut out more petals at once.
Once each petal was cut I then stitched each petal together and made a petal train (I used a sewing machine for this part). For my 20x20 pillow I cut a piece of felt, 22x 42 (2" seam allowance) Starting from the center of the pillow I started to stitch the petal train in a small spiral and then eyeballed the spiral out. You could use a sewing machine if you like, but as I said before it was easier for me to hand stitch. It didn't take very long either.

I do love how this turned out. It was a gift for my dear sister-in-law. For my next one I will probably make my petals smaller and do more so it is more full.

missed me?

its true I lied. I promised I would blog at a steady pace and I didn't even make it a week! My whole family got sick, then I was a busy bee making Christmas gifts then we had Christmas and if that weren't enough we jetted off to Disneyland... Now I am back and ready to work. Its going to be fun!