A Mini DIY Moment: Heartfelt Art

After a depressing dip into a lack of inspiration, I've bounced back and now have several projects working their way from the clutter of my head into reality. One of these projects I finished just yesterday (and actually meant to share yesterday, but that's how these things go): a bit of wall art I've been meaning to get to.

Remember how the Husband made me a cute paper-heart scavenger hunt on Valentine's? Well, for ages those 25 hearts and their adorable little messages were taped to our bedroom wall in a grid. I really liked the idea of having them all displayed once I'd collected the lot of them, but I knew it'd take me ages to find a decent square picture frame.

I toyed with the idea of waiting to get one from IKEA, but I knew it wasn't quite what I was looking for. So when I stumbled across this hideous, but perfectly proportioned butterfly picture at B&Q yesterday, I knew this was my chance. In the trolley it went, and when I got home and fed E his dinner, on went the Sarah & Duck and off came the back of the frame.

I considered using a fun white and gold decoupage paper I had to cover up the butterflies, but unfortunately, I didn't have enough to make it look good. In the end, I stuck with white paper because having a grid of red hearts was busy enough, even with a white frame and white mount...it didn't need to feel more cluttered.

After using some double-sided tape to stick down a few pieces of tissue paper (the texture seemed to work better than the cheap white card we have right now), I started arranging my hearts. Initially, I put all 25 on, just to see what it would look like. With all the paper hearts touching and lapping over the matting, again it was just too busy. So I decided to pair it all down to the top 16 messages that I would save and display. The others are saved too, just not in the frame.

Of course, this is what was going on as I tried to take pictures...

Once I had my set, I just stuck them on with more double-sided tape to finish the job. Oh! But there was one more finishing touch: to make sure I didn't forget this gesture, I got our nice marker and added the date and a tally of how many hearts made up the original Valentine. Between this, and the Lichtenstein print from the TATE Modern, and a Royal Copenhagen plate my parents got for us, the gallery wall in our bedroom will be shaping up quite nicely now.

In the meantime, I'm off to research my next project for E's room...