valentine's day craft: felt hearts

Since moving into the new house, I've been busy with lots of decorating and organizing and have yet to establish a little craft-making area. Because I'm not making much of anything new at the moment, I thought I'd reproduce a few projects I've showed in the past on my personal blog - edited slightly for relevant content...

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Even though Peter and I don't really do anything for Valentine's Day (especially now that our anniversary is on February 4th), I still like to use it as an excuse to make cards or decorated cookies or something for friends and co-workers. When I saw the following picture online, I HAD to make these adorable hearts - despite not having a single one of the supplies in my possession, especially not any pinking shears.

Luckily, they're quite cheap and very easy to make. The idea, instructions, and photos are all at the crafty blog The Purl Bee. They sell the felt and the embroidery thread in their fabric/yarn shop in NYC, so their supplies are pretty fancy and a bit pricey. I did mine on the Hobby Lobby budget instead: a total of $6 for my little project! This bought me enough felt to make 30-35 hearts, and enough filling to stuff a couple hundred of them. (Oh, and I also had to buy some pinking shears, but they were a good tool to add to my supply anyway.)

To make, basically all you do is print out the little heart template, cut out pairs of hearts with pinking shears, sew them most of the way together with a contrasting color of thread, stuff them, and sew shut. Quite a satisfying project to make, as you can whip out several of these in about 10 minutes.

The original instructions were to sew little safety pins to the back to make them into Valentine's pin gifts. But I did 2 other variations. First, in a middle-of-the-night inspiration, I decided to make some of them into magnets by hiding the magnet inside with the stuffing, so you can't even tell they're magnets until you stick 'em on the fridge.

Then, I poked a very thin ribbon through some of the hearts to make them into decorations for some little gifts.