an idea so easy it barely needs instructions

fireside drawing

happy tree of hearts

if you follow me on twitter or instagram, you might have seen the pattern i drew last week, a little bit inspired by fair-isle knitting and christmas jumpers...which then led to an aha! moment when i stumbled upon these inexpensive little wooden hearts while christmas shopping...why not combine the two? so i did.

little fair isle jumper hearts

1. plain wooden heart 2. paper design printed
3. design stuck on heart 4. trimmed!

i'm not going to call this a tutorial because any moron can see that i've just stuck the paper design onto the hearts but i will just give you a few tips to make sure it goes smoothly...

tip 1 - i drew my design then scanned, resized and printed it out the width of the decoration to save on ink waste. you could also create your design in the shape of the decoration to save even more on ink waste, but i didn't think of that until afterwards.

tip 2 - i used a matte medium as my glue - a liquitex one that i happened to have in the cupboard. it's bloody expensive but it was perfect for the job but i'm sure PVA glue would work just as well. make sure the PVA doesn't smear your printer ink though.

tip 3 - i coated the heart & the back of the paper design in the matte medium and pressed the two together firmly

tip 4 - i waited until the paper was absolutely dry before trimming despite my impatience to get on with it

tip 5 - i used a *really* sharp blade to trim the paper & managed to cut my fingertip and bled on my design but you could avoid that by being more careful

tip 6 - i went into the garden & grabbed some twigs to make an impromptu 'tree'. i also then trampled mud into the cream hallway carpet, but you don't have to do that bit either