You’ve surely tried all the usual things to impress your love on Valentine’s Days gone by, chocolate covered strawberries and champagne, a path of rose petals leading to a petal laden bed, love letters in his or her underwear drawer. But if not, that’s OK. Here’s a bonus idea for you. This year, add a little imagination to your romance by making a paper heart garland, which you can use to decorate a variety of places, from the head of the bed, to a doorway or a mirror. 

 

Materials:

 

multi colored construction paper

thick thread, string or ribbon

glue

scissors

stapler

 

Step 1. Cut out around 50 hearts from the construction paper, all the same size and shape. This is easy with the help of a heart shaped cookie cutter, or you can make your own pattern by folding a piece of card stock in half and sketching one half of the heart along the fold. Then cut it out. When you unfold the half heart, you will have a perfectly symmetrical heart to use as a template for all the others. You could also have the hearts die cut at a specialty bookshop. Whichever way you go, you’ll need loads of these hearts, so choose your method wisely. 

 

Step 2. Align some of your hearts in a vertical line on your table. Make a vertical line of glue going from the bottom to the top of all the hearts in your line. Affix the string or ribbon to the glue by pressing it firmly the entire length of every heart. Add more glue on top of the string and affix a second heart to the glued area, effectively creating a back to the heart underneath. Press each set of hearts together well to be sure the glue sticks, and allow to dry. If the glue is too difficult to deal with, you can always attach the string to the hearts with staples, but it won’t be as pretty.

 

Step 3. When the glue is fully dried, fold back the lobes of each heart making them look like butterflies. This gives your garland the 3D effect mentioned above.