Valentine’s Decorations – Dogwood Hearts

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31 Days of Love

Today we have Crystal form Crystal’s Tiny Treasures her lovely natural Valentine’s Decoration (if you like these, you may like Me and My Shadow’s Willow Tree hearts too!) . It is part of our 31 Days of Love series, which is slowly coming to an end (boo). Check out the  Valentine’s CardsValentines Gifts that Kids can Make and Valentines Treats shared previously!

I’m so pleased to be a part of the 31 Days of Love with so many awesome bloggers full of fantastic ideas!

I’m Crystal from Crystal’s Tiny Treasures and I blog about the fun educational crafts,activities, books and recipes my children enjoy. We’d love for you to pop in and join us for a cup of tea, just don’t mind the chaos!

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I think there’s a reason that Valentine’s Day falls in the middle of winter, just after the excitement of Christmas has calmed down. We need something to look forward to in the winter darkness, and an excuse to brighten up our hearts and our homes. However, we need not spend a lot to do this. I love my husband but I don’t need to spend a fortune on him for him to know this (at least I hope not!).

This year , with a challenge from Red Ted Art, combined with a new skill of making wreaths from dogwood I have created a beautiful foraged dogwood heart wreath that financially cost only pennies to make, but is filled with my love.

The supplies for this dogwood heart wreath are few: dogwood, raffia, wire, and snips. If you can’t get your hands on any dogwood, you can use willow or another pliable type of branch. I love the bright red burgundy of the dogwood branches in the winter, they are striking outdoors, and just as cheery indoors.

First, find a couple of branches that are relatively straight. Clip off any smaller branches if you need to. I began by wiring the smaller ends together like so. You can use more than one branch for each side of the heart it you’d like it to be more full.

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Then I carefully bent the pieces of the dogwood around to form a heart and wired the thicker ends together to form the bottom of the heart.

I don’t have photos of this project in progress as I needed both hands, but it wasn’t too difficult to do.

Now you have the basic structure of this craft done! Add a little raffia or ribbon around the joins to hide the wire. Add a loop to the top of the heart for hanging and you’ve completed a dogwood heart for your love!

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I enjoyed this process so much that I wasn’t ready to stop, so I continued on making another two hearts in smaller sizes using smaller branches.

I used the raffia again to hang the smallest heart inside the large heart, and the medium-sized heart below.

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Have fun with this love decoration and personalise it to suit you and your home and love. Add some wrapped chocolates, pom-poms, or some little family photos. dangling from the hearts to make it fun. I like to keep things simple, so for now this is how mine hangs.

If you’ve enjoyed this craft, you may also enjoy some of our other activities, just click on the photo to take you to the page.

Grandma's Jam Jam Cookies, made with love cookies, family favourite cookies, sandwich cookies, photo Lavender Tartan Hearts by Crystal's Tiny Treasures Valentine's Day crafts for kids, easy Valentine's Day crafts for toddlers and preschoolers, tissue paper crafts for Valentine's Day, Crystal's Tiny Treasures Childminding in Whitehead, photo

 

You can find Crystal through the following social media channels: e-mail, Facebook, Google +, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin or your favourite reader.