Crafting Beaded Hearts for Valentine's Day

Our neighborhood craft club got together last night at my home for our February meeting. We worked on beautiful pearl and beaded wooden hearts.

I found this project on Pinterest, and it was originally done by a stylist named Heather Bullard.

Finding small wooden hearts at craft stores proved to be more challenging than any of us expected, especially with Valentine's Day just around the corner. We were searching for a cut-out with a little lip along the edge. But, we came up empty-handed. So, I reached out to a friend, who edits a woodworking magazine, and she hooked me up with a lady who does crafts with a scroll saw. She made 20 of these babies for us! Thank you Linda Helgerson!!

The STEPS for MAKING A BEADED HEART:
We got started by painting the wood hearts. We used craft latex paint or Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. Then we dark waxed them for some rustic patina. When they dried, we drilled a little hole in the top to thread twine through to hang them later. The next step was to apply white craft paint (I used Elmer's Quick Dry, which dries clear) to the inside of the heart. Then take a handful of pearls or beads, and pat them down onto the glue. You'll want to use a variety of sized beads, so you can insert tiny beads in the spaces between the bigger beads. Let it dry for a good half hour, before you pick it up, or the beads could roll off. If any do fall off, just apply more glue and put it back in. When its dry, thread twine or ribbon through the hole, and if your "heart" desires, add a charm. You'll see I used an antique style key, a bird wing, and a little bird cage (you know I love me some birds). Use any trinkets you have at home that may have come from old jewelry, or you can just buy little charms like these in the jewelry aisle of your local craft store.

Here's the hearts all of us made. You can see some ladies got really creative, by using yarn, ribbon, multi-colored beads, and even wooden hearts that were picture frames!

Don't they look romantic?

It was a really easy craft, and we had fun eating, drinking and crafting!

Laura's hearts were very intricate and beautifully unique!

Here you can see Meredith applying the white glue to the inside of her heart and spreading it around. You want a pretty thick layer of glue in there, so the beads have something to adhere to. Otherwise you might find they don't stick so well if the glue is spread too thinly.

Gail used this cool picture frame and applied the beads to the center where the photo would go. Now she has a nice Valentine's Day decoration for a table top! (love that big brass key!)

Even my son got in on the crafting action!

Natalie used a large flat wooden heart, and to create the lip around the edge, she wrapped the backside and the edges in a pretty script piece of scrapbook paper! Way to find creative solutions!

Heather's string was glam! (and wait until next month - she's hosting our next craft club and you'll be super excited to see what she has in store - it will be pretty and functional for the home!)

Jackie's hearts featured beautiful glass beads!




It was a great evening of friendship and crafting! Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

The Elmer's Glue Technique

A friend of mine recently brought me this all-white armoire to paint for her toddler son's bedroom. She wanted to make it more masculine.

At first, we contemplated an antique blue color, and were going to decoupage old Sports Illustrated's pages on the doors. She's going for a vintage football theme - so cool! Then while she was getting her daily dose of eye-candy at HomeGoods (wait, doesn't everyone go to HomeGoods daily?) she spied this vintage looking cabinet.

She brought it to me, and said, "let's do this to the armoire." Okay I said, while thinking, "geeze louise how will I distress down the blue, without going past the black and showing the armoire's original white color?"

So, I consulted a Facebook group of painting gals that I belong to, who are real pro's. Most of them run retail shops, or furniture restoration businesses. I knew someone there could help me. And a great person, named Meghan Cobb did. You can check out her business page here.

She advised me to use Elmer's Glue to get that lifted off, chippy edge look on the blue paint. You can use Elmer's Glue to crackle paint, and there's a lot of YouTube videos out there that can show you the basics. Here's one I watched.

I wish I had taken step-by-step photos of this process, but its very messy and I didn't have someone who could shoot photos for me. Stopping to wash my hands was impossible. You'll understand in a minute.

So here's how this project went down:

1) I painted almost 3 coats of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint decorative paint in Graphite over the entire armoire. Then to give the grey color a deeper/blacker hue, I dark waxed the entire thing. I did not clear wax this piece.

2) Next I used Zinnser clear shellac to seal the graphite on the doors and drawer fronts, where I planned to do the glue/blue paint trick. Why this step? Because it allowed the blue to be lifted off without taking any of the black with it. We did not want to see any of the original white.

3) When the shellac dried, I thinned down some regular old white school glue. I used Elmer's All Purpose glue. I just added water and mixed it to a thin consistency. Next I spread that on the doors and drawer-fronts, working on one at a time.

4) I did not let the glue dry at all. I immediately painted Annie Sloan's Napoleonic Blue over the wet glue. Once it got tacky (in a couple of minutes), I used a paper towel to blot away the glue and paint around the edges. It worked perfectly and did not even begin to lift any of the black away.

5) To get some crackle, I pulled out my hair dryer and ran it over the wet blue concoction.

6) Once it was completely dried, I dark waxed over the entire surface again.

So here is how it turned out:

I hope she likes it!

DIY Paper Flowers for Teacher Appreciation Week

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week at my son's preschool. They sent home an email last week with suggested items to bring for the teachers and staff each day. Tomorrow is Flower Day. And another day this week is Greeting Card Day.  Students are welcome to purchase these items, or make them by hand. Saxon and I decided to make our own flowers. I was planning on doing some fun tissue paper craft with him. But then two things happened that got in the way - he fells asleep at 6 PM and I realized we have no tissue paper.

So, I searched the net for other flower-related craft projects and found this awesome paper flower tutorial. at A Little Hut. The do-it-yourself project was very simple, if not a bit time-consuming considering I wanted to make 5 of these. However, the process became quite easy after repeating it so many times. And Saxon slept through the whole thing. Oh well - he will sign them in the morning!

Note: I did not use card stock. I used lightweight scrap paper. And I used Elmer's Craft Glue, which nearly dried on contact - so I didn't have to use the clothespins to hold my folds together. I held them with my fingers for a few seconds and they stayed. That's some great glue! The artwork on the bottom is a stamp that I colored in with a pink marker. I used fun, scalloped-edged scissors to cut the green card-stock.

So here's how they turned out...I think we may end up saving these for Greeting Card Day and just buy some flowers in the morning! Clearly, these are not as polished-looking as those stunning red ones from the lady who wrote a book on crafting with paper. But, I think anything that someone attempts to make by hand for another person shows a lot of appreciation, don't you? The teachers deserve more than just a quirky-card made in china and printed in the gazillions. Maybe I should spray them with perfume too!