Paper Strip Heart Decorations


I wanted to make a simple decoration to hang on my light fixture above our kitchen table for Valentine's day. I had seen these paper strip hearts floating around the internet and figured they'd be pretty easy.  They were pretty easy once you got the measurements and the directions to stack up your paper strips all down.

So here's what I did.  I cut strips 1/2 an inch thick.  I think if I did it again I'd go with wider strips--3/4 of an inch or maybe even an inch wide. I tried out a few different sizes, but cutting strips in 5, 6, and 7 inch increments seemed to work out pretty well and gives you a nice sized heart.  You could do 4, 5, and 6 or 6, 7, and 8 inch hearts for slightly larger or smaller decoration without out any changes to the instructions.


Cut two strips of paper for each heart in matching scrapbook paper.  Then choose paper that coordinates but is different for each of the smaller sets.  So you'll end up with 2 strips at 7 inches, 2 strips at 6 inches, and 2 strips at 5 inches. There's enough paper strips in the photo above for 4 heart decorations. It works the best if you use two sided scrapbook paper--but the strips I cut in the photo are all one sided--they turn out pretty cute too, you just have to pay attention to the direction you are stacking them when you put the hearts together.


With single sided paper you will stack the strips in this order (starting with the bottom): small strip white side down, medium strip white side down, large strip light side down, whatever you are using to hang it (out the direction of your strips, not the staple), large strip white side up, medium strip white side up, small strip white side up. Once you have them all stacked in this order, line up the side you are going to staple and make sure the ribbon or string is positioned so the staple will catch it and staple it. 

If you're using double sided paper, just make sure the matching paper is facing towards each other (facing towards the middle or facing to the outside--not facing up or down) so that your hearts are all made of out of the same design (I made this mistake on one, and since the designs all used the same color schemes--you can only tell they are mismatched if you look at it closely).


Now that the cutting and stacking part are done--it's a piece of cake. Just flip the strips over to create a heart.  I found that stapling the top of the heart with the staple vertically and the bottom with the staple horizontally works the best.  Staple the bottom of each heart and you are set.


Here's one of my single sided hearts all stapled with curling ribbon coming out the top.  When they were all finished, I tied a bunch of them to my light fixture and curled the ribbons.  A fast (once you figure out the directions thing should be laying), easy, and inexpensive Valentine's day decoration!


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