Sumac Valentine Wreath

  

I was on a beautiful winter walk recently and happened to spot a sweet small forest of sumac. As I admired their bright red against the white snow ~ inspiration hit ~ such lovely gift from nature to create a love-filled wreath with! 

I gathered up an armload of the velvety berries (being sure to leave lots for the birds) and headed home to give it a try. 

To create you will need:

cardboard ( I used an old pizza box)

Sumac berries (staghorn sumac  ~ be sure you know exactly what they are meant to look like before heading out to collect!)

glue gun 

ribbon

To begin, draw what ever size heart you want your wreath on to be and it cut out.

Fold your heart in half and cut out half a heart shape from of the center.

Tada!

You can then fire up your glue gun...

and begin gluing your berry clusters onto the heart until all the cardboard is fully covered.

Next, fold your ribbon in half and glue the folded part to the back of your wreath for hanging. 

Then if you choose you can then add a little glitter to bring some extra sparkle to your love. To encourage the glitter to stick as well as to help preserve your wreath, give it a spray down of hairspray before shaking on the glitter.

We shook it on and then took if outside in the sunshine to test its "sparkleability". It passed! 

Ready for its new home.

 Our heart full of love now hangs as a welcome to all!

May love and sparkles find you where ever you are.

Potato Print Valentines

I have been pondering an easy, fun way to create our love letter valentines to pass out...

Heart potato prints occurred to me ~ so we thought we would give it a go!

Here's how it goes

To begin

Slice your potato in half.
Press a strong cookie cutter in the potato and using a knife, cut in from the side up to the cookie cutter that is still in the potato ~ until the excess potato falls away and you are left with your shape.  (Thanks helpful reader for this tip!)

You can then carve out a handle on the backside of your potato or push a craft stick into the back ~ a better grip for easier stamping.

Paint your stamp (painting seems to work much better than dipping)...

Now for the fun part ~ time to get stamp happy!

We enjoyed using metallic paints

As well we painted our stamps with glue, stamped them onto our cards and shook on glitter. 

***

We spent our afternoon in a world of glitter and paint ~ a warm way to share in a winters day, while a blizzard swirled around the home.

The girls shared the task of filling in our love letters.

Teamwork all the way! (including the messy clean up ; )

Then of course we had to join that wonderful white world and taste the blizzard first hand!

Heres to glitter and rosy cheeks!

~ Shanti ~