Paper quilled hearts

I have been working on a few small craft projects this last week, to use as decoration on the Valentines card that I am making for my husband. Obviously I can't show you the whole card because his desk is next to mine and he reads this. One of the crafts I tried before Christmas was paper quilling and I made these snowflakes, this time I have tried little hearts.

First I shredded my card with a paper shredder, the home made quilling tool that my husband made is also in the photograph, there is a link to make your own at the bottom of the snowflake post if you want to. I chose white paper as I had no red available but you can quill in any colour, saving time with the paint effects later.

These are the two different types of heart that I made, very simple ones as they are for the front of a card. The two at the sides are made by folding the strip of paper in half and just rolling the two ends inwards with the quilling tool and adding a spot of quick drying glue to hold the two curls together. The hearts at the top and bottom are made by rolling two whole strips up, letting them loosen slightly, then pinching one side to produce a tear shape. The two of these tear shapes are then glued together to give you the heart shape.

Then I thought I would give the hearts an old antique feel with paint effects, so first I sprayed them very lightly with a gold coloured spray paint. Lightly is the key word here because if the paper gets too wet the curls unroll. It is not the end of the world if they do though as you can just get the quilling tool and roll them up again, before they set.

 Then to give them a valentines feel I got a dry, stiff paint brush and lightly brushed red paint on the curls as you can see it has given them an interesting vintage look with the hint of redness. Now just have to complete the card.

Rock Painting

I have been thinking of ways of making the garden look a little more interesting or magical lately, to the children over the stark winter months, and also introduce some more fun crafts. This time we have killed two birds with one stone (excuse the pun). It was a really rainy day, the children were a little upset that we had to cancel our trip out so we had to come up with something to do last minute that was fun. We didn't have any acrylic paint so we have had to use normal poster paint but they loved making these little rock monsters so much that we will probably make some more when we have the proper paint. My husband sprayed them with lacquer to make them a little more waterproof.

 When they were dry and the sun was shining, we hid them all over the garden. As you can see above, some have had some finishing touches of googly eyes and the toadstool has a little hand carved stalk. But these were mostly painted and made by my youngest children aged just 6 and 2 with much love. 

Now when winter comes and the garden is bare, there will be little folk or things of interest hiding everywhere. So far my daughter has been finding them hilariously funny every time she spots one lurking. Some of them like the one above are very colourful and will brighten up a dull corner.

I spotted this lonely one playing in the dirt. We did something similar to this for my husband on father's day, my son painted a rock and we wrote "dad rocks" on it. you can see it here. can't wait to paint some more using acrylic paint. we have quite a few crafts lined up to cheer up the garden for winter and to try to make it a little more magical for the little ones.