{Post #892} Valentine Day Decoration

Not too sure how this is going to fit into my color scheme elsewhere in the house, but here goes.  First is the project in its current state.  Then I'll show how I made it.  


My husband helped tremendously by cutting the wood to size and then making it stationary with the nail pad thingies.  


Here is the project right now...I just need to write names on each heart and attach them to the fabric.  Then my hubby is going to cut me a thin board to paint then affix to the back to hide all the staples and rough edges of fabric.  


We have 8 children.  The hearts representing my husband and I are in the center.  My third child is married, so her square has a heart for her and for her hubby.  The hearts are cut from a variety of paint chip cards. 

Here is the process:


First, my husband constructed this frame, which is about 12-1/2" square:

Then I put a layer of quilt batting and a white fabric with black polka dots and pulled it around and stapled with an electric staple gun.  The corners were very bulky when I wrapped it around, so I cut off the batting and most of the fabric:

Finished wrapping, and it all looks good.  Here's my rickrack and paint samples to choose from:

I wanted dark pink rickrack, but could only find the bright red, so I went with the darker paint samples.  Here they are laid out where I want them after I wrapped and hot-glued the rickrack to the back:

I found a small heart-shaped cookie cutter and cut out the top row.  They were a little too large for my liking.  I guess they would have been OK, but I didn't want them to hog most of the available space in each square.

I thought I would have a smaller cookie cutter from my wild and carefree white flour and sugar baking days, but did not.  So I turned to the computer.  I found the Webdings font for capital Y is a heart with a swoop at the bottom which makes it look like a heart-shaped conversation bubble.  So that's what I used:

I am going to try a couple different writing instruments and hand-written fonts to see what I like for lettering.  I will have a finished picture at some point for you to see!


~Joan