I Heart You, and thus, a Giveaway!

A friend of mine recently found this cute tutorial on Pinterest for a beautiful ruffled felt heart shaped wreath. She shared it with me, and I loved it. Then, she went a step bigger and better and braved the lines at Joann's to get me all the necessary supplies to make it. This was super fantastic because it meant that I would actually be able to make it before Valentine's Day. So, I sat down last night and whipped out this beauty in about 2 hours.

After making this wreath, I found I had a couple of tips and some information to add to the original tutorial.

• I used a 12" styrofoam heart wreath.
  
• I cut about 150 3 inch circles, and used up my entire 3/4 yard of felt.
  
• This means you'll need at least 150 pins. I bent several of them while I was assembling my wreath, so I was glad I had extra.
• I bought flat head pins in case the heads showed, but they don't show at all. I'm sure you could use round head pins, and they wouldn't hurt your fingers so much when you push them in. I quickly started using my leather thimble to protect my fingertips. Now I'm trying to convince my daughters that the thimble is a tool, not a finger puppet.
  
• Instead of tracing 150 circles onto the felt, I cut one circle out of craft foam, then held it in place as a pattern on a double layer of felt while I cut. This saved a lot of time, plus I didn't have to be super careful to keep my tracing line from showing when I cut them out.
  
• It's important to place the circles close together, but don't pin them too closely or they'll get crowded quickly. Instead of luscious ruffles, you'll have flat folds of fabric. Space your pins about 1/2 to 1 inch apart. After I had a few inches covered on my wreath, they started looking too dense so I pulled a few of them out and placed them elsewhere.
• Fluff the circles to fill in any thin areas.
  
• Hang it on your front door, then keep going outside to admire how cute it is.
  

When I was finished, I found I had a large pile of concave square pieces of felt, the scraps from between the circles. I also had a spare 9 inch foam heart, so I decided to put those pieces to use. I call this little guy Scrappy. He reminds me of flames of love, and I think he's charming.
If you decide to recycle your scraps like me, I would recommend using flat head pins. They are more likely to show since your pieces of felt are smaller and more randomly shaped. I did end up cutting some most of my scraps of felt into appropriate pointy shapes to fill out this wreath. As with the circles on the first wreath, I folded the pieces into fourths before pinning them on the heart.

And I've decided to do something fun with it. I'm going to host my first giveaway on this blog I'm going to give Scrappy to one of the six of you reading this. Leave me a comment telling me why you read my blog, and I will randomly pick a winner from the comments. The giveaway will be open until Wednesday, January 25, 6pm pst. Good luck!