Valentine's Day Mantel

I don't usually decorate for Valentine's Day, but I felt like the house was looking drab after we put all the Christmas decorations away. I saw a valentine's day mantel on the Sunny Side Up blog here, and thought there were a few ideas I could use for our mantel. I don't do crafts as often as I would like to with the kids, but I felt like this tissue paper banner seemed easy enough and would be something the kids and I could do together. I followed the instructions given here and I'm really happy with how it turned out!

 A quick trip to Hobby Lobby and we had the supplies we needed. We found that one package of red and one package of pink tissue paper was more than enough. I think I've had the heart stencil sheet since back when I used to do actual scrapbooking and it hasn't been used in years, but it worked great for cutting out our paper hearts!

I asked our son if he wanted to help, but after a quick inspection of what we were doing he decided he would rather play. Our three year old was a great helper though! We cut the tissue paper in to squares and then placed a pencil eraser in the middle of a tissue square and twisted the tissue around it.

 Next, we dipped our tissue in a tad of glue. We dipped the tissue in the glue and dabbed it on the plate each time so the hearts didn't get too heavy. 

Then stuck the tissue on the heart and held it for a few seconds. 

We did the outside first and then filled in the middle. 

Our first finished heart! 

This project took a lot longer than I had expected. This is day 2. :)  My little helper is rockin' the Christmas pajamas. 

The finished product! Yay! 

I tried using double sided tape to attach the hearts to the ribbon but they fell off in seconds. I decided to hole punch both sides of each heart and string it through the ribbon. That worked out well; and I can adjust the hearts on the ribbon if they don't look like they are evenly spaced. Perfect!

I changed the picture to a favorite of mine from our kids valentine's day photo session last year and added two little glass heart jars filled with M&M's that I got for around $1 each (also an idea from the Sunny Side Up blog) and we are ready for Valentine's Day! :)