DIY Heart String Back Drop
Every year Valentine's sneaks up on me. I am always on top of Halloween and Christmas, but Valentine's Day usually slips through the cracks. This year I decided last minute that I needed something "heartsy" in our living room, so I came up with this cute Heart String Backdrop in one evening.
***One year later UPDATE: I finally used a friend's Silhouette Cameo for the first time, and I felt like a total joke thinking about how much time I spent hand-cutting out each of these dang hearts. If you have access to a Cricut or Silhouette Cameo, I HIGHLY suggest you borrow it. But for all you poor peeps like me who are still saving up for those amazing cutting-machines: this hand-cutting tutorial is for you :)
What you'll need:
I cut out my own heart stencil. I just eyed it and tweaked it until it was the size and shape I like. I held it up against the wall to see if I wanted it bigger or smaller, and then used my stencil on all of my pink and red paper and traced hearts.
I cut more red than pinks, because I wanted my pattern to consist of more reds. You can do whatever pattern you want. You can even add in some purples, whites, or even yellows or blues if you want. If you measure and count out exactly how many hearts you'll need, that's fine. But I hate measuring anything. So I cut until I ran out of paper (and it just so happened to have worked out perfectly)
I got the red/white string in a pack from the dollar store. It came with the two blue strings shown here, and a black/white string I have already used.
Lay out the string
(don't mind the goldfish cracker.. curtesy of my son.)
You'll want to lay out the hearts before you glue them. I had to rearrange them a few times before I liked it. I stuck with the pattern: red, dark-pink, red, light-pink, red, etc.
I used a hot glue gun to glue the string on. A thin line down the middle and gently press the string down (careful, its hot), and pull on both ends of the string to make sure its tight and pressed firmly into the glue. It holds well. That part took a while, but it was easy.
And ta-da! Here's the final product.
Okay, in all honesty, I would have liked to put a piece of wood across the top with all of the strings glued to it. But this is a project I wanted to get done in one evening, and I didn't have any wood strips on hand (really?) But for my quaint little apartment that nobody ever sees besides me and my little family, this valentines backdrop is cute enough for what I wanted.
Time to make: 3 1/2 hours. (but I had a movie on.. so I could have been distracted at times..)
Price: $1.00 (string)
Hassle (between 1 & 10): 8 (There were a lot of hearts to cut out and then glue)
(If you use a Cricut the hassle would move down to like a 4)
Bottom line! Make or Buy? I'm undecided on this one. If you don't mind 'winging it' for a lot of the steps, and you're tight on money, then making it is definitely worth it. If you want it to look nicer than this, short on time, and money isn't an issue, then yeah maybe you should buy it. It did kind of take an annoying amount of time.
Happy Valentines Day!
***One year later UPDATE: I finally used a friend's Silhouette Cameo for the first time, and I felt like a total joke thinking about how much time I spent hand-cutting out each of these dang hearts. If you have access to a Cricut or Silhouette Cameo, I HIGHLY suggest you borrow it. But for all you poor peeps like me who are still saving up for those amazing cutting-machines: this hand-cutting tutorial is for you :)
What you'll need:
- Color Card stock Paper
- Scissors
- String
- Glue Gun
So first, I searched for all my red and pink card stock. Unfortunately for me I didn't have any red. Any normal person would run to the store real quick to get the paper they need, but I have a baby. So we are never able to run anywhere 'real quick'.
I was then reminded of a quote from my dear Alice from Alice in Wonderland, "You could always paint the roses red.." And here we are, painted card stock. I purposefully left some white coming through, I liked it like that.
Anyway, you'll probably just use regular red card stock. But if you decide that you'd like to spend extra time on this [already lengthy] project and paint the paper... this is what it looks like!
I cut out my own heart stencil. I just eyed it and tweaked it until it was the size and shape I like. I held it up against the wall to see if I wanted it bigger or smaller, and then used my stencil on all of my pink and red paper and traced hearts.
I cut more red than pinks, because I wanted my pattern to consist of more reds. You can do whatever pattern you want. You can even add in some purples, whites, or even yellows or blues if you want. If you measure and count out exactly how many hearts you'll need, that's fine. But I hate measuring anything. So I cut until I ran out of paper (and it just so happened to have worked out perfectly)
I got the red/white string in a pack from the dollar store. It came with the two blue strings shown here, and a black/white string I have already used.
Lay out the string
(don't mind the goldfish cracker.. curtesy of my son.)
You'll want to lay out the hearts before you glue them. I had to rearrange them a few times before I liked it. I stuck with the pattern: red, dark-pink, red, light-pink, red, etc.
I used a hot glue gun to glue the string on. A thin line down the middle and gently press the string down (careful, its hot), and pull on both ends of the string to make sure its tight and pressed firmly into the glue. It holds well. That part took a while, but it was easy.
And ta-da! Here's the final product.
Okay, in all honesty, I would have liked to put a piece of wood across the top with all of the strings glued to it. But this is a project I wanted to get done in one evening, and I didn't have any wood strips on hand (really?) But for my quaint little apartment that nobody ever sees besides me and my little family, this valentines backdrop is cute enough for what I wanted.
Time to make: 3 1/2 hours. (but I had a movie on.. so I could have been distracted at times..)
Price: $1.00 (string)
Hassle (between 1 & 10): 8 (There were a lot of hearts to cut out and then glue)
(If you use a Cricut the hassle would move down to like a 4)
Bottom line! Make or Buy? I'm undecided on this one. If you don't mind 'winging it' for a lot of the steps, and you're tight on money, then making it is definitely worth it. If you want it to look nicer than this, short on time, and money isn't an issue, then yeah maybe you should buy it. It did kind of take an annoying amount of time.
Happy Valentines Day!
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