January 12, 2012

How to: Heart Paper Chain

Valentine’s Day is in the air! Can you feel it?!? Here is a quick and SUPER cute way to make a little something to dress up your home!

How to: Heart Paper Chains

What you’ll need:

Pretty paper- I used a regular weight and a cardstock, both worked equally well. This is a perfect use for double-sided paper. No double-sided? No big deal.

Glue Stick

Scissors

1. Collect supplies like this pretty paper:

2. Fold one sheet of paper in half.

3. Cut paper into 1 1/2 inch wide strips. You can use a fancy paper cutter or just wing it. I was in a wing it mood.

4. Check out the center fold, make sure it’s right in the middle.

5. Fold one end of the paper to the back, creating a 1/4 inch tab. Repeat on the other end. Your paper now has 3 folds – one in the middle, and two little tabs at each end.

5. Put some glue on to one of your little end tabs, on the colored side. Now place the glued tap to the center of the paper strip, using the middle fold as your guide. The glue tab fold and the center fold will line up.

6. Repeat with the other side of the paper. I’ve off set the taps in the picture below so that you can see them better. The middle fold line is right between the two glued on tabs.

7. Now put a little glue on the inside edge of one of the loops. Press the two loops together.

You should have something that looks a little like this:

8. To make the heart-shape more obvious, pinch the middle fold. *pinch pinch*

Viola! You’ve made your first heart.

Now if you are fancy and have double printed paper, super. If you don’t, you make want to reverse a few of your hearts so that the print is in the middle of the heart instead of on the outside. Here is an example:

Repeat, repeat, repeat…

9. Now link them together by making loops out of 1/2 inch wide paper that is about 5 inches long. Loop two hearts together to make a chain and repeat until your heart paper chain is as long as you’d like.

Using 12 inch long paper strips produced hearts that we about 3 1/2 inches wide. I used longer strips of paper to make few bigger hearts. The original paper length determines the size of the heart.

My Other Recipes

I stuck push pins in my walls (perk of living somewhere you plan to tear out soon) and just hung the hearts from the pins.

Happy crafting! I hope this brightens your Valentine’s Day and your mantel!