I <3 Hearts!

22 Apr 2010 Leave a Comment

Here’s the next in my series of projects from the www.dollarstorecrafts.com Super Secret Stashbusting Challenge. If you’ve visited this blog before, you may remember the heart shaped piece of art I made in memory of my Dad. It was in the tradition of a Sailor’s Valentine and I made it by using a styrofoam heart as the base and covering it with a mosaic-like design of seashells that he and I had collected when I was a child.

I had been mulling over ideas for creating a similar one but this time, in honour of my mother. I had a few ideas rattling around in my head but nothing that I felt really spoke of the tie between my mom and me in the way that the seashell heart had for my dad and me. When I saw the pink felt heart with cut-out designs in my envelope, I was inspired to make it the basis for my Mom’s heart (sorry it’s not red Mom! I know that’s your favourite colour!).

I began by covering the styrofoam heart with a piece of tissue paper that had been part of an Easter assortment package of tissue paper. I used some Liquitex Gel Medium that I spread thinly over the heart with a foam brush to adhere the paper to the styrofoam.

Then, I used Aleene’s Tacky Glue to glue the pink felt heart on top of the tissue paper and I left the heart to dry thoroughly before I moved on to the embellishment stage.

I knew that I really wanted to include some vintage buttons from my collection on this heart. I have a tin of buttons filled to the brim with my buttons that had been my Mom’s and had been handed down to her from a couple generations before her. The tin itself – hmmm, I really should come back and update this with a picture of the tin – is pretty much a small coffee can that my Mom sewed a sort of slipcover for with little pockets on the side to hold basic sewing tools like seam-rippers and the like. I have memories of my Mom sewing and repairing things for me, button tin at her side. Beyond that, I have memories of her allowing me to play with those buttons when I was a child. You know how great it can feel to dig your fingers through the soil when you’re gardening or run them through sand at the beach? I just loved to dig my hands into the tin and let the buttons run through my fingers. Then I would dump them out in front of me, count them, sort them into colours, shapes, numbers of holes or types of shanks on them; make mosaic style pictures out of them – whatever I could think of to do!

Although I was loving the buttons added to this heart, I decided that I wanted something a little different for the centers of the flowers. I felt it needed a bit more dimension and interest. I turned to the zippers that were included in my package for this. I began by opening one of the zippers all the way. I used a pair of scissors to clip off the little tabs at one end and the zipper pull on the other end. To make the little bud shapes, I started by making a fold at one end and holding it in place with a dab of hot glue. I gave it a couple of turns to roll some more of the zipper around the fold I had made, again securing it with some hot glue. Once I had this center of my bud, it was simply a matter of wrapping the remaining part of the zipper around the center. I didn’t roll it around perfectly even, rather I worked up and down at a bit of an angle to create the more rose-like appearance. I found it was very important to apply some hot glue frequently as I worked as I was unable to maintain the shape I was trying to get otherwise. I found that hot glue worked the best in applying these rosebuds to the heart as well.