Of Mice and Valentine's

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So it is Bug's First Valentine's Day in elementary school and while she may not be feeling the pressure of it, I sure am. I've seen so many cute ideas out there in blog land, but what we settled on, were the Hershey Kiss Mice. You know, the ones that once I found, gotten Bug's heart set on, I couldn't find again. Yeah, those ones.

Ugh, so I couldn't find the "right way" to do them, but here is the way we made them.

Materials:

 

• 2 bags of Hershey Kisses
• White Paper (for the eyes)
• Black Paper (for the nose)
• Hole punch (to make the eyes and the nose)
• Black marker
• Felt in red and pink (for the years)
• Scissors
• White glue
• Double stick tape
• Doilies - though we haven't gotten to that part

Step 1 - Use the whole punch and the white paper to create the eyes, after you punch the paper, pop a dot in the middle, or have your lovely little bug do it.

 

Step 2 - Same method for the nose but with the black paper, minus the dot part, noses don't need dots.

Step 3 - Cut a whole bunch of hearts out of the felt, to be used for the ears.

 

 

Step 4 - Cut 2 pieces of double stick tape to attach the ears to the body and head of the mouse, we tried using white glue for this, but found it didn't dry fast enough, the double stick tape worked perfect. You'll want to put one piece of the tape on the front of the heart and the other on the back. It seems like overkill but trust me... it works.

Step 5 - Now attach the ears to the body of the mouse, or the 1st Hershey kiss if you're not seeing them as Mice just yet.

Step 6 - Then put the head on the body.

Step 7 - Remove the tail of the Hershey kiss from the head side and pull the tail on the body side out a bit.

Step 8 - Dot the face of the mouse with 3 specs of white glue.

 

(Trust me, there is glue on the face...)

Step 9 - Add the eyes and nose

 

 

Then simply complete these 31 more times and you've got...

 

We'll be putting one of these in a snack bag, with a red heart addressed to each child.

I've got to say, the hour and a half these took to put together, was awesome, bug and I had so much fun. There were a lot of lessons, we counted the number of noses we'd need, talked about the fact that we'd need twice as many eyes, she wanted to complete them in a pattern, red mouse, pink mouse, silver mouse... It was a lot of fun. And yes, some chocolate was consumed. 

Love Blocks

So this is the project that drove me to cut my own blocks...

Here are the materials:

 

Pictured and not pictured:

• 6 2x2" blocks, which as I discussed are actually 1.5"x1.5"
• Various squares of paper cut to 1.5"x1.5"
• Hearts
• The letters "L", "O", "V" and "E" any way you want... I picked 6 different fonts
• Mod Podge
• Foam brush

And from there is is pretty darn easy... Just put the paper squares on each side of the blocks.

And then the letters... one letter per block, so you've got one block with 6 "L's" and one with 6 "O's" and so on and so on... then add the hearts to the last two blocks and you get this:

 

  

They didn't quite turn out like I expected... but they are growing on me. I decided to go with non-traditional Valentine colors and I'm really happy with that aspect.  

Linking up to Saturday Nite Special at Funky Junk Interiors. 

Heart Art Trio

So I still don't have a final place for these, but I wanted to post them all together... I'm so happy with how they turned out.

 

  

Incase you missed it, detailed instructions for each are available at:

• Heart Art Stacked
• Heart Art Buttons
• Heart Art Strips

Heart Art, Part 3 - Paper Strips

This 3rd Heart Art piece was the hardest to figure out what to do with. The button one was my first idea, the stacked was a very close second (though why I completed them out of order I have no idea...)

But this, the 3rd, I had a handful of ideas none of which I was sure would work. But then, while browsing through some other blogs, I found this and knew it was exactly what I wanted to do for the 3rd frame. The ladies at Roots & Wings do a much better job of explaining how to make these and I honestly LOVE the papers they used.

But those vibrant papers wouldn't fit in with what I wanted my collection to look like so I went with boring red and white paper. I plan on making more of these with more exciting paper soon.

Here is what you'll need to make my boring version:

Materials:

• Pictured are 8 sets of paper cut to lengths that decent by half an inch each. But I ended up only using the smaller of the 6 sets because the larger 2 wouldn't fit. Each set is 2 piece of paper, cut to the same size. All of the strips have a whole cut at the top and bottom of the strip.
• 5"x5" frame
• Square of burlap
• Square of black paper
• Brads, grommets or another fun way to fasten the strips of paper together. I imagine you could skip the holes in the paper and just staple them in theory.
• Not picture, I also ended up needing 2.5" strip of paper but I'll get to that later.

Step 1, Attach the burlap to the black paper:

Step 2, Starting with one of the largest strips of paper and then going to the smallest, line up the bottom of strips and then when you get the smallest, go back up towards the biggest. Like I said, you might want to visit Roots and Wings for the instructions. I don't feel like I'm doing a good job.

Step 3, this is the slightly tricky part... You then need fold the top of the strips of paper in towards the center and secure with a brad like this:

 

You'll notice in the picture above, that I've got a strip running down the center... that is the 2.5" strip I mentioned earlier... without it, my heart was too big to fit into the 5"x5" frame. It was beautiful without it, but it didn't fit and needed something to draw down the top and puff out the sides a bit more. 

Step 4, attach to the burlap with white glue and pop into the frame...

Then if you're like me, you realize that you don't like it... I thought it was missing something.

So I curled up a few more pieces of paper and ended up with this, which I am very happy with.

 

Now I have to figure out how to display them together... I'd love to have them above my new book case, but it isn't finished yet. Maybe by the weekend it will be. 

Heart Art, Part 2 - Buttons

Yesterday I shared the first part of this, the stacked heart art. But it was this image I had in my mind when I bought the frames, this was the project I knew I would create...

Here are the materials:

• 5" x" 5" Frame
• Heart shape to use as a template
• Square of burlap
• black paper
• Buttons
• White glue

Step 1, mount the burlap to the black paper:

 

Step 2, then tack the template to the burlap:

 

Step 3, start gluing the buttons onto the burlap using the white glue:

 

 

Step 4, finish gluing the buttons on:

 

Step 5, remove the template and check to make sure you're happy with the way the buttons have filled in and make any adjustments you want.

Step 6, pop into the frame and enjoy

 

$2.50 spent on it, and I love it.

Tomorrow, the 3rd and final in the Heart Art Collection and then I've got to figure out where to put them.

1 Frame, 3 ways.

I found these adorable frames at JoAnns yesterday on clearance for $2.50 each.

 

At that price, I picked up 3 and right away knew I was going to do a Valentine's series in them. Here is what I decided to do with the first.

 

 

Materials:

• 5"x5" Frame
• Hearts cut to a variety of sizes
• Square of burlap (left over from the place mat project) 
• Black paper
• Foam Mounting Squares

Mount the burlap to the black square, and then begin layering the hearts with the mounting foam squares to give some dimension to the piece.

Side view to see how the layers are working.

Keep going 'till you're out of hearts and then put the piece in the frame.

Ta-daaaaa

 

  

  

  

They aren't photographing as cute as they look in person... bummer.

Look for the other 2 frames later in the week and then I've got to find a way to display them together.

Linking up to Made By You Monday and  Make Your Monday

Hopping on the Burlap Bandwagon

So everyone seems to be using burlap lately. I feel like I can't open a blog without seeing something burlap.

I've had an aversion to burlap that I couldn't put my finger on, but I decided to go for it today and went out and picked up a yard of the stuff to make some place mats with.

Here we go!!!

 

Materials used (and picured)

• 1 yard of burlap, bought at JoAnns for $2.50
• Red yarn, inherited from mom who knows when
• Scissors
• Tape measure
• Tapestry needles.

Step 1 - cut the burlap to your desired size, making sure to first cut off the selvage so you've got no threads bound at any edge. After seeing some awesome square pace mats while out to lunch in Vegas the other day, I decided to go for 15.5"x15.5" squares. (I'd love to show you a picture of the ones I saw, but it was a business lunch with my boss sitting next to me and I didn't think it was really a good idea to whip out my iPhone and take a picture of them right then.)

Step 2 - allow the edges of the burlap to fray a bit, but NOT to the finished point you are hoping for, throughout the rest of the process here, it will fray more... so if you want a half inch fray, and you get a half inch fray off the bat, you'll end up with an inch fray. Be forewarned. Oh, and be prepared for lots of fuzzies.

Next up - and I'm sorry for the super blurry picture, I didn't realize 'till downloading that they looked like this... Anyway, Next up, measure in about an inch, and pull on one of the strands of burlap. Then pull the whole sucker out. It might break, that's ok, just fish out the rest with a needle and keep pulling.

Then pull out 2 more...

Step 5 - Thread your tapestry needle with your desired color of yarn and begin weaving the needle through the space you opened up being sure to go opposite of the threads to the right and left of where you are weaving.

 

Step 6 - Keep on weaving all the way to the end. 

 

Step 7 - Count over a bit, I counted over 7 strands, and then pull out 3 more strands from the burlap and weave another length of yarn through. (You can see here what I mean about additional strands fraying on the edges while you're working.)

Step 8 - From here... do whatever you want... you might want to keep right on going all the way to the other side of the place mat with the stripes. You could turn the mat and go perpendicular to the first 2 strands you've woven in (which is what I did.) It's up to you.

I decided I only want to frame the top and side of the mat, it seemed how ours were meant to look. After I'd gotten everything the way I wanted, I clipped the ends of the red yarn, and cleaned up the fray.

Here are our finished place mats:

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, we don't usually do place mats on this table,  still want to see every inch of it after all the hard work that went into it. But I did want a little color and texture on it right now. I imagine after Valentine's day is over I will store this away and perhaps do a runner down the middle.

Linking this up to Saturday Night Special at Funky Junk Interiors and Make Your Monday.

Failed Candle Holders

So not all projects go as planned, we all know that... figured I'd share one of my failures...

I had high hopes to make these little "love" votive holders. I assembled my materials.

• 4 Glass Votive Holders
• Glass Etching Cream
• Contact paper to use as a stencil
• My cricut to cut the contact paper
• Some red vinyl that I was going to try a little something different with.

So I cut the contact paper and applied it to the votive.

I even burnished down the edges

(Photo by my son, had to use it...)

I then applied the etching cream according to instructions. Which I didn't want to photograph for fear of touching the camera and the etching cream at the same time.

Batch one didn't work out... at all really. I left the cream on the full 5 minutes, thought I had applied it liberally enough, but ended up with spotty results.

Yeah... that is not the look I was going for.

So I reviewed the instructions, and decided that it could have been because they weren't quite clean enough and maybe I didn't apply the etching cream liberally enough or leave it on long enough...

I tried again.

I failed again.

Parts turned out better:

But no single votive was even close to being what I wanted.

I might try again... I might not.