Sweet DIY Sewn Paper Hearts to Brighten Winter

Many years ago, on my old blog, I made a post about sewn paper hearts made from loose pages of old books. It's a good way to make something creative out of books that are falling apart. 

Much of the country is having bad weather. These might be fun to make, tucked up snug and warm inside! Here in the desert Southwest, the skies were very pretty today and it was warm enough to go out without a sweater. But a cold front arrives tomorrow, they predict. I will be making more!

I've picked most of the wording up from the old Penniwigs blog, but all of the photos that follow are new --- of some little hearts I made today.

TIPS: When sewing the hearts, DON'T PULL on the thread, because the paper will tear. Be very gentle when snugging up the blanket stitches. I also made one with a plain running stitch, to see how that looked. If the paper does tear a bit, don't worry. Just dab some glue on it and put some glitter over it.

You can make the hearts tiny or larger, depending on your taste and where you plan to put them.

Finally, on some, I decorated both sides. That way, I could get more looks from the same amount of hearts. I like plain ones, too. 

From the old blog:

On Pinterest, I saw a "Pin" that was very eye-catching. Someone had made hearts from the pages of an old book. They were written in a language other than English, in narrow columns. 

I don't have the same columned paper to use, so I used book paper. 

But there were no instructions on the post where the hearts were featured. I took a good look and tried to reproduce them.

They were slightly filled, and the edges were sewn with a blanket stitch after being darkened with ink or chalk. Then a little vintage cut-out was pasted to them, and what looks like "caviar" was placed around the cutouts in a heart shape. 

What's caviar? It also goes by the name "micro beads" and "micro balls" and I found it by searching for "nail caviar." It very much looks like little fish eggs!

So, to make these hearts, find a suitable book - I'd suggest an old hardback with decent paper. I unfortunately used a very silly sci-fi paperback, and the paper was as porous and lousy as the plot. Hmph!

SCROLL DOWN FOR THE PICTURES

Instructions/Tutorial

• Cut out heart shapes using a template (you can make your own, or use those below). Pull or tear out four pages, trace around the template with a pencil, cut through all four pages at once. Continue until you have enough hearts cut out. Each heart takes two pieces.
• Now ink the edges with a nice brown ink or piece of chalk. A Prismacolor colored pencil will also do the job quite nicely if you have no ink or chalk!
• Sew a blanket stitch around the edges. When you have just a little bit still open, stuff a bit of cotton fluff or a bit of tissue paper in there, then finish stitching. I used the scissors to grab the fluff and push it in.
• Print out some likely images, or get some old Valentine reproductions and cut out shapes or heart shapes
• Glue to the middle of the hearts
• Take your glue (I do like that Aleene's Fast Grab very much and Dollar Tree carries it here) and apply a thin bead where you want the caviar or glitter, and shake or spoon it over the glue very quickly. I used a small paintbrush to paint on the glue where I wanted the glitter or caviar.
• Shake off excess.

You can print out and use these images if you don't have any scrapbooking paper or old book pages. Use the links so that they print out the right size! Images are stored on Google Drive so it's safe. 


LINK<--- for the "printed page" image printable (from the cute website, The Old Design Shop) (see end of post)
LINK<--- for the Valentine motifs printable
LINK<--- for the heart shapes
































I think these look cute in a canning jar, a nest, an old bowl, etc. Anywhere! I stuffed mine with cotton batting but you could also put dried lavender inside.


Thank'ee for dropping by. 


    Kind regards,


    The Merry Olde Dame, Holly