Hanging Flower Heart

flower-heart_2.png

Materials Used

  • Faux flowers (I used about 12 bunches total. Pick the big ones-they’ll fill the heart faster!)
  • Hot glue gun
  • Sheets of styrofoam
  • Serrated bread knife/electric turkey carver/jig saw to cut the styrofoam
  • Cup hooks
  • Balsa wood
  • Glitter paper

Instructions

  1. First trace heart shape onto styrofoam. If you don’t feel confident to do this freehand, you can always sketch it out on a large piece of craft paper first and then trace it onto the styrofoam. In order to fit the size of heart wanted, cut off a corner of one piece and glue it onto the bottom to fit the tail of the heart. Use hot glue gun to attach the pieces of styrofoam together to make one solid shape.
  2. Next, use a serrated bread knife, electric turkey carver, or a jigsaw to cut out the shape from the styrofoam. If you go the bread knife route, you may want to wait to glue the pieces together until after you cut them since it’s a little rougher on the material. The jigsaw cut through the styrofoam like a hot knife through butter, which is another reason to have one.
  3. When the heart is cut out, pull or cut the flowers off of the stems and use the hot glue to attach the flowers directly onto the heart. Notice how your faux flower is assembled though—sometimes they will fall apart if you cut them off the stem in the wrong area. Since three colors of pink for a gradient effect is used, fill the lightest flowers in on the top third first, then fill in the bottom third with the darkest, and then completed the middle section last.
  4. You can also cover the sides with flowers if you want to, but you’ll want to buy smaller varieties in the same color so they don’t stick way over the sides and make your shape a little mushy.
  5. Made an arrow and arrow tail out of balsa wood, and then cut pieces of glitter paper the same size and hot glued them all together.
  6. To hang the heart, glue a cup hook into the top of each of the heart “humps” and stuck 2 command hooks onto the ceiling where you wanted the heart to hang (about the same distance apart that the cup hooks are). Then tie the heart to the hooks with fishing wire for an “invisible” look.
  7. Once the heart is hanging, stuck each half of the arrow in opposite ends of the heart, and its done!

Check them out here at A Beautiful Mess.