Felt Heart Tree

One of the things I love most about Pinterest is how it can spark different ideas.  You get that right combo of looking through a set of pins at the right time, and suddenly you get this insight to mash up a couple in a new way.  I feel all kinds of proud of myself when that happens!  This super cute Valentine's Day tree is the product of one of those moments.

At our recent Valentine's Day pinterest party, one of my friends made an adorable heart tree using hole punched hearts.  It was sweet and labor intensive and poor Diana got lots of indulgent looks as she glued her way furiously on that tree throughout our entire party.  To her credit, she did make other things!  It's just that this tree took forever.  Another friend made one at our Christmas pinterest party, using circles like in this pin.  Also took forever and got the "there there, chin up" looks from the rest of us.  Now, I loved the looks of their trees, but not the time investment.  My flash of inspiration came from seeing Sarah's pinned felt trees, with the scalloped strips of felt.  Now, those were looking a lot like hearts in my Valentine's Day mindset, so I thought that with some adjustments, I could marry the two ideas.  I did, and I got this:

Hooray for crafting mash-ups!

Supplies

• 10 pieces of felt, in different colors (I used 2 shades of pink and red)
• Glue stick
• Cone base (I used an old shirt box for mine instead of a styrofoam one)
• Scissors

Directions

(Pictures below)

1. Make your cone by taping or gluing cardboard in place.  Trim base to be even.  Or just use styrofoam and hot glue.
2. Cut out your felt hearts in varying sizes.  I preferred to cut mine one layer at a time, because it was hard to tell how many I would need of each size for each layer until I was actually gluing them in place.
3. Glue point of heart and stick to cone.  Hold firmly in place and allow to dry slightly before moving to next one.  Try to align the tips of the hearts on each row so that they are at the same height.  My first row, I had the hearts extend past the cone because I knew I wanted to place it on a stand when finished.  If you want your tree to just sit directly on the tabletop, line up the tops of the hearts with the bottom of the cone so they won't get squashed when you place it on the table.
4. Repeat layers, alternating colors.  Position the layers so that no cone is showing through.  You can see that I alternate some of my hearts so that the fat half of one heart covers the area where the hearts split away from each other on the lower layer.
5. Top tree with 4 hearts in different colors.  Glue the points and the sides of each heart.  Stick point to the top of the cone, and sides of the hearts to each other.  This step got a little tricky because nothing wanted to stay in place.  I glued my hearts together first, then glued the whole setup to the cone.
6. Place cone on top of a candle holder, upside down vase (which I did), or some other stand so that your bottom layer kind of floats.

Step 1. Making the cone

Step 2.  Hearts cut out on the right, and my cone is all trimmed and taped and ready to go.

Steps 3.-4. First couple layers in place.  See that the bottom layer extends past the cone?  And how the red layer is covering the gaps between the pink hearts?

Step 5.  Close up of the heart topper.

Ta da!