Crafting a Valentine's Wreath

I know it may seem crazy to add non-essential jobs to my to-do list, especially when family life is exploding in many ways (illnesses, work, appliances giving up, cars breaking down). But my eldest will be celebrating his birthday with his kindergarten class, along with all the other winter birthdays, on Valentine's Day. And so I wanted to mark it in a little special way.


Inspired by my friend KJ's felt rose wreath, I wanted to decorate a heart shape to hang on our door. (Okay, in all honesty I first checked out IKEA's website to see if the heart-shaped straw wreaths from Christmas were still available. They weren't.) But while KJ's wreath is lovely, I didn't want to make all those felt roses! I lucked out at the local thrift shop, where I found several bags of new, "silk" flower petals.

 


I've shared previously what tends to happen when we do crafts as a family, and as this craft was to involve a hot glue gun, I decided to go solo. Using heart-shaped styrofoam wreaths from the dollar store as the base, I glued the artificial petals on in a random pattern. The hearts came covered in red glitter, which shows through a little at the point of contact with the petals. I actually like the effect; almost like added coloration or shading on the petals.

I had originally planned to make three hearts, but completing one was sufficiently labour-intensive --it took me a couple of hours over several days-- that I'm stopping at one for now. Next year I'll do another one, and the year after that...