Paper Heart Wreath

I'm quite proud of myself on this one.  A friend pinned this very lovely looking heart wreath, but after I tried hunting it down, I never actually wound up with directions, just tumblr pages and pictures in endless loops.  An oubliette of paper wreaths with no guidance.  After embiggening the picture I did have, I gave it a shot and found success.  Now I will share my efforts with you so you can be spared my mental gymnastics and angst.

We'll walk through this step by step together, with pictures!

Supplies

• Paper
• Glue stick
• Scissors or paper cutter
• Tape or some other way to hang on wall

Directions

Fold your paper in half, long side to long side. 

Fold it in half two more times, short end to short end.

One time...

two times!

Unfold the short folds...

 ...and cut along the folded seams...

to get 4 long strips of paper.

(Before you break out the glue stick, let me recommend laying down some paper, newspaper, whatever you want to protect your work surface.  In the interest of beautiful blog-worthy photography, I don't show the place mat that I had underneath my sticky gluey craftiness during this project.)

Glue inside of fold...

...and outer ends of the paper.

Curl ends of paper in toward center, and pinch in the middle along the fold to secure the heart shape.  Notice all your glued parts of the paper should be touching now and sticking nicely.

Repeat times a bunch!

Once you have all your separate hearts glued, it's time to glue two long chains of the hearts and leave one special heart set aside.

Glue the outer sides of the pinched bottom of a heart.

Slip the glued paper into the center of another heart, alternating colors or pattern if you want,

...and hold tightly to secure.

Repeat times half of your hearts!  Follow your pattern, be random, whatever you like.  Be sure to create two heart chains, which you will glue together to form the large heart wreath at the end.  Leave one heart unglued to either chain.

Glue the bottom right of one heart and the end of a heart chain to the top left side of the heart at the bottom of the other chain, to form the bottom of your heart wreath.

Squeeeeeze them together so they feelz it.

Glue the tops of the loops on each heart at the top of your chain.  Also glue the bottom sides of your leftover heart.  Stick the top of one heart chain to the bottom of your leftover heart.  Do the same with the other chain, and you should have a heart shape for your big wreath.  See how it should look?  Those light pink hearts at the top had glue on their curvy tops, and the white heart was glued along its pinched bottom fold.  They were all squeezed together nicely until they held.

Now, hanging is fun, because the wreath doesn't necessarily just have this default heart shape if you hold it by the tops.  It gets kind of sad and deflated looking.  So I strategically taped mine to the wall, and I have no shame in that.  It works, and that's what matters!

Nice way to greet guests when they walk in the front door.  Like I said, I'm pleased with myself on this one!