HANGING FLOWER HEART DIY

Supplies: – faux flowers (I used about 12 bunches total. Pick the big ones—they’ll fill the heart faster!) – hot glue gun – sheets of styrofoam – serrated bread knife/electric turkey carver/jig saw to cut the styrofoam – cup hooks – clear fishing line – command hooks – balsa wood – glitter paper

First you’ll want to trace your heart onto your styrofoam. If you don’t feel confident to do this freehand, you can always sketch it out on a large piece of craft paper first and then trace it onto the styrofoam. You can see that in order to fit the size of heart I wanted, I had to cut off a corner of one piece and glue it onto the bottom to fit the tail of the heart. Use your hot glue gun to attach the pieces of styrofoam together to make one solid shape.

Next, use a serrated bread knife, electric turkey carver, or a jig saw to cut out your shape from the styrofoam. If you go the bread knife route, you may want to wait to glue the pieces together until after you cut them since it’s a little rougher on the material. The jig saw cut through the styrofoam like a hot knife through butter, which is another reason I keep telling you guys you should get one!!!!

When your heart is cut out, pull or cut your flowers off of the stems and use the hot glue to attach the flowers directly onto the heart. Notice how your faux flower is assembled though—sometimes they will fall apart if you cut them off the stem in the wrong area. Since I got three colors of pink for a gradient effect, I filled the lightest flowers in on the top third first, then filled in the bottom third with the darkest, and then completed the middle section last.

You can also cover the sides with flowers if you want to, but you’ll want to buy smaller varieties in the same color so they don’t stick way over the sides and make your shape definition a little mushy.

I made an arrow and arrow tail out of balsa wood, and then cut pieces of glitter paper the same size and hot glued them all together.

To hang the heart, I glued a cup hook into the top of each of the heart “humps” and stuck 2 command hooks onto the ceiling where I wanted the heart to hang (about the same distance apart that the cup hooks are). Then I tied the heart to the hooks with fishing wire for an “invisible” look.