valentine (or olympic party!) papercraft garland

Boredom and cabin fever reign. Avoiding laundry never ends. I know. You don't want to hear about it any more than I want to live it. Such is February. February is also the time of Valentines. Not something I generally get too excited about, but this year I have time on my side, supplies overflowing, and the desire to make anything I can get my grubby little mitts on. (You can see my post, rabbit holes, for a full rundown);

Enter Paper Craft. I love finding things I can make; free things online. I figure, I love paper, I love sewing. I have been wanting to give sewing paper a whirl for a while. So you can only imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon this great post for sewn paper heart garland on Indie Fixx. I knew it was the one for me since it was:

a) free & made by things i have on hand;

b) was something i actually thought was pretty cool, paper garland; and

c) would give me one little decoration for Valentines Day, something even I could handle.

Off I went to rummage through that ever-growing stack of paper I have on hand. Various colours and thicknesses, some years old, wait, some DECADES old, others i just picked up on sale and loved. The heavier weight ones are perfect for this project since I don't have any left over wallpaper to use. After weeding through the pile and picking out the colours I wanted, I made a heart template to trace on cardboard. I drew mine freehand and trimmed the size and shape to my liking, but feel free to trace or print out any heart you like.

Once I had my paper choices i was ready to start tracing and cutting. I chose: an embossed white floral pattern, a silver embossed floral pattern, some red, pink & striped paper scraps and some pink glittery striped paper. I knew these colours would look ok on my blue wall, so I went with them.

Once I was done cutting, I arranged the cut out hearts in an order I liked. I chose a sparkly silver thread, with a dark red thread in the bobbin. I wanted to twist the two threads together in the spaces between the hearts, but you cant really see colours from any distance away. My point? Thread colour does not matter so much. Go with whatever. I also found that the metallic mixed with regular thread was a bit crazy. The two threads were of different thicknesses, making for knotting and pulling etc. on the back side of the hearts as I was sewing. I was sure to leave enough thread between hearts so there was room to space them properly after the fact. It was a bit of a guessing game, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. I just pulled the mucked up threads through, CAREFULLY, and taped the excess on the back of each heart. I then twisted the threads in between so the distance was the same between each heart, taping excess bits to the back with tiny bits of tape. Voila! Done and done.

So here is the final project, hung above my dining room table bench. Pretty cute!

This is also a perfect little something to do while watching tv, say, the Olympics (go Canada!) as well. If you get creative you can do little skis or hockey skates or flags or better yet, maple leaves (go Canada!), if you plan on having a little Olympic bash.

I still have one more length to sew, but I want to try something different with it. I cant help but think that the mismatched thread weights made this project more complicated than I had originally envisioned. Next time I will try using regular thread, and make more of a hanging mobile out of them. The ideas never end I tell ya, so stay tuned :)

Happy Friday & Happy Olympics Everyone! (Go Canada!)

♥ leel