Patchwork Paper Heart

I stood in my living room this week and realized we still had a Christmas print hanging on the wall.  Oops.  Down it came but I didn't want to put the usual picture back up so I decided to get on an idea that had been swirling around in my head for a few weeks - a paper patchwork heart quilt.

I can't claim this as an original idea as I was definitely inspired by something I stumbled upon when I was clicking around in different blogs.  The inspiration piece was for Christmas and I ought to have pinned it to save it so I could give credit to the original artist, but I didn't so here we are with nobody to credit with the idea.

I needed a few supplies from the craft store.

• Scrapbook paper (4 sheets at $0.20 - $0.60/ea)
• Backer cardstock (2 sheets at $0.60)
• Frame ($7.00)
• Glue sticks (already had)
• Scissors (already had)
• Ruler (already had)

Measure and cut your squares (or if you want to get fancy, choose another shape - hexagons?)  I made a bunch of 1.25 inch squares for this project.  I used plain old scissors here, but if you're a scrapbooker you probably have all kinds of fancy-schmancy cutting tools that would make this faster and much more precise.

Cut out your heart shape.  I did this by taking a spare piece of random paper, folding it in half, and cutting out a perfectly symmetrical heart. I then traced it onto the good cardstock (so we wouldn't have a crease) and cut that out.

Draw a few guidelines.  Using my ruler I drew a guideline lightly in pencil so I'd be able to easily center my squares down the middle of the heart then I started placing my squares.  I let the squares flap over the edges since the plan was to trim them once we were finished.

Since the plan was to frame this up, I didn't worry too much about heavy duty gluing.  I used a glue stick, but you can also use glue dots or even double sided tape.

Once I had all my squares in place I let it sit a few minutes to make sure that nothing would come loose, then I flipped the heart over and trimmed the excess squares.

I then took the second piece of white cardstock centered the completed heart and tacked it down with the glue stick.  Popped it into the frame and TADA!!!

A simple and inexpensive project to make your house a little more Valentiney :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Note: Sorry for the weird lighting in the pictures - this is what happens when you do crafts in the evening at our house.