diy valentine garland

I have a confession.  I love burlap.  It is rustic and versatile, and smells so earthy and organic.  Yes, I am a burlap sniffer. 

I'm glad I got that off my chest.  Now onto what I did with my burlap recently!  I made a Valentine's garland!  And it was super easy and you can make one, too.  Now, I am not traditionally a Valentine's Day decorator.  I've never felt the urge to festoon the house with red heart and doilies, but this darn mantle on our fireplace really kind of demands to be decorated.  It has been looking REALLY naked after I decorated it for fall and then Christmas.  So I came up with a pretty simple solution.

If you'd like to make your own, you'll need:

about 1/4- 1/2 yard of burlap
red yarn
red marker
embroidery needle
thick paper
sharp scissors
scotch tape

First I drew a large and small heart on thick paper to use as a template. 

I cut them out, and started tracing around them on my burlap.

Yep, I'm pretend tracing with my left hand there. 

I traced a few rows, and then cut them out.

I made 12 big hearts, and then 18 small ones.  I taped up the end of my yarn so that I could easily thread it through an embroidery needle. 

Now I started threading the yarn through my big hearts.

I didn't concern myself with spacing the yarn through the heart, I just did a couple different entry points, and just kept pushing the hearts down the line of yarn.

I put the big hearts aside and decorated the little hearts with my red marker.

I strung these in the same way as the big ones, but on a new length of yarn.

And then I decorated with my newly made garland!

I like.  I will call it Rustic Romance.  Just kidding.  I think I'll call it Valentine garland, ok?