i'm doing pretty good this week. i wanted to share a project a day, and so far, so good. today's simple valentines project is a cute button heart.
i started with a styrofoam heart, about 6 inches in size. be careful unwrapping those. mine broke in half, as i was taking off the plastic wrapper. and i was very dramatic about it, saying "ohhhhh, my broken heart" over and over. lol! i managed to glue it back together, and it should be fine as long as i'm very careful with it. i wanted a large heart embellishment, that was about the same shape heart as the styrofoam heart. this spinner chipboard heart from little yellow bicycle was perfect. and then you need buttons. lots of them. i went with pinks, in all different shades. i own about a zillion buttons, so this wasn't a hard supply to find ;)
i should have taken some photos of the process. i never think to do that. sorry. i started with the spinner heart embellishment. i put about 3 layers of pop dots on the back of the heart, and then stuck it right to the middle of the styrofoam heart. i wanted to be able to tuck some of the buttons underneath the heart, which is why i layered so many pop dots to give it more height. then i started adhering buttons.
i started with the larger buttons, right around the spinner heart, and tucking them under just a little. then i just worked in small sections, using a mix of smaller buttons and larger buttons. i used glue dots to adhere all my buttons. for buttons that needed a little lift (because they were slightly on top of another button), i used the 3-D glue dots. sometimes, i even used 2 or 3 of the 3-D glue dots on one button. lol! there are a few spots where you can see the styrofoam just a little bit. this really doesn't bother me much. but if it did, you could always paint the heart first, or work some smaller mini buttons on those spots. i did add a few mini brads here and there, just sticking the brad prongs right into the styrofoam.
as for the edges of the heart, i simple added some pink ribbon. i was going to use more buttons at first. but i went with the ribbon, since it was easier. it was slightly wider than the sides of the heart, so it does hang over the edges a bit. i'm fine with that. to adhere it, i just stuck pearl-tip pins every half inch or so. i started at the bottom of the heart, and worked my way up. so when i got to the top, i had the two ends that i could bring up and tie together. this gave it a loop to hang it from something.
Laura Vegas 
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