Heart garlands

Instead of your traditional valentine card, I sent a bit of home decor. It was fun talking to everyone I sent one to and hearing where they hung up their garland. I'm selfish - I kept two and put one in my apartment and one in the window at my office at work.

It was a very simple process:
1) Grab a stack of magazines from one of the many overflowing piles. The Anthropologie catalogs were definitely my favorites
2) Pull out all the pages that had pretty designs
3) Create heart templates out of card stock. This helped me group the hearts on to the page and make the best use of pretty patterns
4) Start cutting. I freehanded some hearts as I got more comfortable
5) Lay out the yardstick and start putting rows of hearts together
6) Start up the sewing machine and run the hearts through. I found that it was easiest if I kept the hearts spaced only a couple of stitches apart. You can see in the picture above what happened when the hearts weren't propped up by their neighbors
7) Stick in envelopes with a note for friends and family. I put aside a few to share with etsy friends, too