DIY Valentine Love Notes Garland

Today's tutorial is a Valentine's garland, made with mini envelopes.

It's a variation on the advent garland I made a couple of years ago...

... but instead of having an envelope for each day leading up until Christmas, there's an envelope for the first 14 days of February, each one with a little love note or other special something tucked inside.

To make the garland, you will need:

- 14 mini envelopes
- washi tape (Japanese masking tape) & pretty doilies, or patterned paper, cute stickers, etc, basically anything you fancy using to decorate the envelopes
- red felt and the heart template from this tutorial
- glue and double-sided tape for securing all your decorative details in place
- scissors and a pen (I used one with red ink)
- mini pegs and a length of twine, ribbon or cord for displaying the envelopes as a garland

1) Cut out 14 hearts from red felt 

2) Decorate the front of each envelope with washi tape, doilies or other pretty things. 

I cut strips of tape that were slightly longer than the envelope, then turned the envelope over and trimmed the excess tape with scissors.

To stick the doilies, I placed the doily face down on a piece of scrap paper and carefully dabbed it with a glue stick, covering only the area I'd need with glue. I then carefully peeled the doily from the paper, lightly positioned it on the envelope and pressed down to secure it in place.

3) Then use double-sided tape to stick a felt heart in the centre of each envelope, and write the dates Feb 1st to Feb 14th (or just the numbers 1 - 14) on the envelopes. 

4) Write a little love note or choose other special bits and pieces to tuck in each envelope - a copy of a special photo, maybe, or little gifts... or you could write a longer love letter and cut it into 14 pieces, so it can be assembled piece by piece over the 14 days ... or, if you're planning a special evening or trip for Valentine's Day you could put in 13 clues to what you're doing / where you're going, and then on Valentine's Day itself write a note revealing your plans


5) Finally, use the mini pegs and twine / cord to display the garland. 

Please note: this tutorial is for non-commercial use only. You may borrow one or two photos if you want to blog about my projects but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce entire tutorials on your site. Thanks!


Enjoyed this free tutorial? Buy me a "coffee" and help support my blog!


Subscribe to my newsletter for a monthly free pattern and visit my crafty tutorial archive for lots more free projects.

Visit my shop to buy my printable PDF sewing patterns:

Ideas for Making Handmade Cards

Writing yesterday's gift tag "how to", I remembered how I used to make birthday cards in the same style when I was a teenager.

They were an awesome way to use up scrap crafty stuff / make use of all those bits of fancy paper and shiny foil that were too pretty to be thrown away... and because they involved using scraps, each card ended up being slightly different.

To make your cards...

1) Choose an embellishment like a fancy sequin or a button

2) Stitch it to some pieces of felt to frame it, completing your card "topper"

3) Then add more layers of coloured paper/foil/giftwrap from your stash

4) To assemble the card, first glue the layers of paper onto your card blank, then use craft glue or double sided tape to attach the topper to the card.

Here are a few old snaps I found of some cards I made in this style many years ago...

Combining plain coloured papers with a bit of fancy holographic / other interesting metallic gift wrap or card works really well - a small bit of sparkle goes a long way!

You can also make card toppers just using felt scraps and paper, no extra embellishments required.

Stitch together pieces of felt in a simple geometric design, and then "frame" the topper with a coordinating rectangle of paper or card.

I also loved to make handmade Christmas cards, picking a new theme every year and spending several happy hours making them all (oh to have the time to still do this!). I used these simple geometric designs for my cards one year, making all my cards in a colour scheme of gold, denim blue and brown.

I used gold sequins and beads from an old broken necklace, gold and blue felt scraps, gold card, bits of shiny gold fabric, scraps of denim from an old pair of jeans, blue sugar paper (construction paper) and bits of rough brown paper cut from used envelopes.

Brown paper is one of those love-it or hate-it things... I love a parcel wrapped in brown paper, and adore the contrast between its plainness and any sparkly ribbon added on top, but I know it's not for everyone! You can of course adapt any of these ideas to your own favourite colours :)

Please feel free to borrow one or two photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial on your site. Thanks!

Enjoyed these card making ideas? Buy me a "coffee" and help support my blog!


Subscribe to my newsletter for a monthly free pattern and visit my crafty tutorial archive for lots more free projects.

Visit my shop to buy my printable PDF sewing patterns:

How To: Crafty Scrap Gift Tags

If you like crafting, chances are you'll have a big stash of paper, card, or fabric scraps left over from other projects... plus all sorts of oddments like sequins and bows and buttons and beads.

Here's an idea for using your teeny scraps and other crafty leftovers to make pretty gift tags for Christmas, birthdays or any other special occasion.

You can let the colours of your crafty scraps guide you to create random colour combos, or carefully select crafty bits which match your chosen colour palette - e.g. if you're making tags to match specific gift wrap, or if you're wrapping all your Christmas gifts in the same colours and want the tags to match the theme.

1) Cut out some pieces of scrap card to form your tags, and punch a hole in each one at one end. Some of my tags were made with coloured craft card (white on the reverse side) and a couple were made with brown corrugated card. You can make them any size you fancy, and almost any bit of card you can write on the back & punch a hole through will do.

 

(You could alternatively skip step 1 and just use plain ready-made tags or luggage labels from the stationery store.)

2) Select an embellishment for your each tag - a button, a fancy sequin, a trio of small beads, etc.

3) Then cut a few square and rectangular bits of felt or decorative paper to "frame" the embellishment you've chosen. I used bits of denim for a couple of my tags - I quite like how the denim has frayed, but if you were making larger tags you could cut pieces of fabric with pinking shears to help prevent them from fraying.

 

4) Now you need to assemble all the pieces of your gift tag "topper"... I just used felt & fabric scraps for mine, so I stitched the felt layers together with a few stitches and then added the sequin/beads/bows in place with a couple more stitches. If you're using paper, or a mix of felt and paper, use craft glue to stick all the bits together and leave them to dry.

5) Finally, use craft glue or double-sided tape to stick your completed "topper" onto your tag, and then leave it to dry if necessary.

 

You can also cut a length of ribbon / yarn / twine / etc to make a string for attaching your tag to your gift. I usually leave this step until I'm ready to use the tags, and then make the string from a short length of whatever I'm using to tie around the gift so the tag matches perfectly.

 

Please feel free to borrow one or two photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial on your site. Thanks!

Enjoyed this gift wrapping idea? Buy me a "coffee" and help support my blog!


Subscribe to my newsletter for a monthly free pattern and visit my crafty tutorial archive for lots more free projects.

Visit my shop to buy my printable PDF sewing patterns:

Snowflake Curtain

Today I'd like to properly show off the snowflake curtain seen in the background of my star photo from yesterday - and showing off is absolutely the right phrase as I am dead chuffed with how it turned out!

The story behind this bit of Christmas craftiness is that we're switching from curtains to blinds in our kitchen, and currently have empty windows with the curtain rails and hooks still in place.... I've always loved making paper snowflakes to stick on the inside of our windows at Christmas but our current flat has such old single-glazed windows that we get terrible condensation, making paper snowflakes a no-go. A snowflake curtain seemed the obvious solution :)

The basic idea behind this is super-simple, but it does take some time! I'd heartily recommend it as a way to while away a winter evening or two, and if you've got kids you could get the whole family involved making snowflakes and put the final display together yourself.

All my paper snowflakes were made from folding circles of white paper (cut using an assortment of plates, saucers and cups as templates) and snipping away - you can find lots of tutorials on the internet if you've not made them before. They were sewn together in strands like these oak leaf garlands - just use an ordinary sewing needle and thread and sew several stitches per snowflake. Try and vary the sizes of snowflakes you use to get a "random" look - and I'd recommend hanging up each strand before starting the next one so you can see how they look and build up your display gradually:

I tied them onto the curtain rail hooks so I can move them carefully along the rail for different effects - they look very cool all bunched together - but you could secure them to a rail or piece of string, or use pins or blutack to keep them in place in your window. A few strands hung together would also make a fantastic mobile!

UPDATE: for a similar effect but much less effort, you could make a curtain or mobile using different sizes of white paper doilies for your snowflakes. Follow the instructions for my butterfly + doily curtain but just use lots more doilies instead of butterflies :)

Please feel free to borrow photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my tutorial on your site. Thanks!

Enjoyed this free tutorial? Buy me a "coffee" and help support my blog!


Subscribe to my newsletter for a monthly free pattern and visit my crafty tutorial archive for lots more free projects.

Visit my shop to buy my printable PDF sewing patterns: