I bought this pack of paper straws at my local Walmart and found them in a drawer a couple of days ago, and thought they’d be really cute as a Valentine’s Day project. Link: https://tinyurl.com/mrxfk7ad

You’ll need a 5 x 7″ wood frame without the glass and a piece of cardboard that’s 1/16th of an inch thick and cut to 5 x 7″ and a piece of patterned paper also cut to 5 x 7″ to line the cardboard. Cut the cardboard and patterned paper and glue the patterned paper to the cardboard, then glue the cardboard to the back of the frame so it doesn’t move around.

Take a piece of red cardstock (I should have used red and didn’t, so had to glue red foam iran to the cardstock…this will allow you to skip this step) and cut it to 4 ” wide by 6 ” tall then either fold it in half on the 4″ length or score it at 2 ” on the 4″ length and then fold it in half. You’ll want to draw one-half of a heart on the paper with the center of the heart on the folded part of the paper. Hope that made sense. Cut out the heart.. You want to make sure when you open the paper, it’s a complete heart and if it’s not, it’s because you need to make sure you draw it on the paper with the center of the heart up to the fold.

Lay your heart inside your frame to make sure it fits and if it’s a little too big, trim it so it fits better. Take a double sided adhesive…I used carpet tape link: https://tinyurl.com/ub55jwb8 and line the red cardstock completely with the carpet tape. Turn the cardstock over to trim off any excess tape but leave the backing on when you’re trimming it as it will really gum up your scissors.

Lay your straws starting at the top and making sure the straw is horizontal and straight, and line it up so the right edge of the straw is at the right side of the cardstock, but completely covers the edge of the cardstock. Lay the straws down making sure they really butt up against each other. You’ll probably run out of straws, so you’ll need to use a box cutter or Xacto knife to trim the straws off the left side of the heart….don’t press down too hard when trimming the straws, or you’ll crush them and make them unusable. Keep laying the straws until the reach the bottom of the heart. You might want to cut the straws before you lay them onto the heart, if you’re good at eye-balling things to determine how long they need to be.

Make sure the straws are well adhered and trim the straws at the top of the heart in the center so you can tell it’s a heart, then put foam squares on the back of the heart to give the project more dimension. If you use these foam squares from Dollar Tree, you might want to double them up to add a little more height to them. link: https://tinyurl.com/a469tc9v Place it inside the frame and add a sentiment if you choose. Here are some Happy Valentine’s Day stamps to choose from. Link: https://tinyurl.com/2s4yf4tp I stamped mine in black ink and cut it in the shape of a banner and added foam squares behind it and placed it at the bottom of the inside of the frame.

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