DIY Lego Valentine Hearts to Exchange

Jake will be six this week and he's obsessed with Lego's.  While helping him put sort his pieces the other day, I had a thought that it would be cool to go non-traditional for class Valentines this year.    It's funny how I sometimes get these bright ideas without actually realizing a million people have probably had this idea before.  Wouldn't it be cool to make little hearts out of Legos for the kids in Jake's kindergarten class?!?!  Of course, I tried to make one from scratch and shockingly, I am not the best Lego creator ever!  So, I went to my trusty Google, where I realized quite a few people have gone before me in this quest.  I found a few ideas and after trying them decided on this pattern from instructables.com.

Jake wanted to help, so we sorted through his red Legos and didn't have enough to make the entire heart red, so a few of our pieces were white.  We liked the shape and the combination of colors, so we decided to make them for Jake's class and a couple other friends.

Then my daughter Delaney & I made a quick trip to the mall.  Having a Lego store with a "fill your bucket" area was super cool for this project.  You pick a large or small container (They probably measure about a 16 oz for a large cup and 8 oz for a small cup, but don't quote me on that! Price is about $7.50 for the small and $14 for the large.).  Then fill your cup with bricks of all sizes & colors from bins that cover the back wall of the store.  The employees are super helpful and shake your container or rearrange the bricks for you, so you can fit a couple more.  The trick is to put in a few large bricks and fill the wholes with little ones.  We counted the pieces in our sample and then chose red & white bricks to create that shape.  We did end up with different bricks because of what was available in our store, but the final product will be the exact same shape.  We are making 22 Lego hearts, after a 50 cent deposit credit for reusing one of our own containers and putting a $5 credit from my Lego VIP card toward the purchase, our total ended up being around 70 cents each.  If you don't have a Lego store near you, I did check the Lego website and found that you can order individual bricks HERE.  I am not sure exactly which bricks are available or how much the little hearts would cost doing it this way, but it looks like a good option.  There are 157 pages of individual bricks to explore and you can narrow that number by entering information such as category and color.

After making some of the hearts, I looked around the internet and ended up combining a few of the ideas I found and adding a little touch of my own.  I searched for free Lego clip art and came up with some fun little minifigure faces and a stack of bricks.  Being a self confessed hoarder of fonts, I searched for a Lego font and came up with Legothick from Urbanfonts.

I used my trusty Photoshop Elements to come up with my design for the tags and some cellophane bags I use for my custom Project Life cards.  And we're all ready for Valentine's Day!

I had planned on using the same little minifigure head on all four of my tags but then I came across the cute little girl with the eyelashes & red lips and couldn't pass it up.  So the little girls will get a girl and the boys will get the little smiling face.  Jake loved the one with the sunglasses, so I put that one next to his name on all the tags.  Download the FREE printable tags for your Lego Valentines HERE!

Don't worry, if you're in a hurry or can't find the bricks to create the hearts for your Valentines.  This idea works just as well with a little bag filled with miscellaneous bricks.  Buy a bin at Target or just grab some from your kids' stash...chances are they won't miss a few (maybe...)!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Check out this post and tons of other great Valentine ideas over on InspirationDIY.com:

And, of course, don't forget to stop by my friend Kim's link party for
all sorts of inspiration...Valentine & otherwise!

Find it over at Today's Creative Blog

A New Year's Centerpiece & A Bloggy Resolution

Happy New Year!

I can't believe that 2011 will be here in just a couple days.  2010 was an eventful year around here, and I'm sure 2011 will have its share of surprises too!  I'll be back soon to share a year end wrap up and more about my plans for 2011.  But for now, I'd like to put my first 2011 resolution in print.  "I, Julie from JulieChats, will do my VERY BEST to post every week here on my blog, sharing something creative to inspire my readers to pull out their papercrafting supplies or do a little something to beautify & organize their homes."

This week, I'm getting a jump on my resolution by sharing a centerpiece I've created to celebrate the coming New Year.  To me, silver is the color of New Year's.  And since I use a lot of red & green in my Christmas decorating, it's fun to pull out some of my blue items to combine with the sparkle of the silver.

To create my centerpiece, I took a tour around my house thinking about things that would create fun silver & blue New Year's theme centerpiece.  Since starting my Willow House business in September, I've managed to collect some fun new items to use in my centerpieces.  I wholeheartedly believe in using items you already own with new ones to create a look for your home that's all YOU!  Mixing the old with the new also saves money, which is a big theme at my house.  So the new items I choose have to be versatile and useful in many ways, for many occasions, all over my home.  Getting them for free or at a discount is a HUGE plus too!

So on my little tour, I found one of my favorite Willow House items that I ordered in August, even before I became a consultant.  I chose to purchase the Cyprus Footed Bowl with Hostess Dollars from my 40th Birthday Willow House Party...so, it was FREE for me! :)  (Bowl was $59.96, now $49.96)  Then, I continued my tour and found two items from the new Spring/Summer 2011 Willow House catalog that I just knew would go perfectly with silver & blue.

I chose the gorgeous, Mediterranean Sage Bowl and the stately Stiletto Pedestal (I used the small pedestal, it comes in a set of 2 with a large & small version) (Set of 2 $49.96).

To fill my bowl and pedestal, I gathered silver & blue decorations from other centerpieces & arrangements around the house.  Fun silver garland with little stars, a silver string of beads discovered for less than $2 at the grocery store, one pick cut into 3 pieces featuring sparkly balls found at Michael's for about $1.50, 3 mirror-ball ornaments from Michael's (about $1 each), a collection of various small ball ornaments I've had for years, in shades of blue & white gathered from a Christmas arrangement and a silver, iridescent bead encrusted candle purchased years ago from Pottery Barn during a day after Christmas sale...I now had everything!

I started putting together my New Year's centerpiece.  First, I set the Mediterranean Sage Bowl inside the Cyprus Footed Bowl, to raise it up and give it a larger presence on my table.  Next, I placed the candle inside the Stiletto Pedestal and set the pedestal in the center of the Sage Bowl.  I ran into a little problem here, the center of the bowl is concave and the pedestal wouldn't stay in the center.  It kept sliding to one side or the other.  I thought about what to do.  If I had any of the little sticky stuff that you use to hang posters on the wall without damaging the wall, I would have tried to stick the pedestal to the bowl with that.  But since I didn't have any, I used a white fabric napkin, folded in quarters and placed in the center of the bowl.  When I set the pedestal on top of the napkin, it didn't slide around.  Now this isn't a really sturdy fix, but I'm not leaving the centerpiece where my 2 year old can play with it and I don't live in earthquake country, I think it will make it through New Year's Day just fine!  The napkin did stick out from under the pedestal's bottom, but I just made sure to arrange my garland and beads to cover it as I laid them around the bowl, circling the pedestal.

No, expert knowledge is needed to create this centerpiece.  Garland and beads are forgiving and since they sparkle, any arrangement of them looks great.  Just toss the garland in the bowl around the pedestal and lay a length of beads over the top, letting it fall into the spaces between & around the garland.  I did have a small piece of beading that I'd cut from the larger length in order to create a different arrangement, so I used inside the pedestal, laying it around the candle to give it a little more sparkle & another layer of silver.

Next, I placed the mirror-ball ornaments.  One of the design principles I've learned after years of doing my own decorating, watching tons of decorating shows and following even more decorating blogs, is that an odd number of items makes an arrangement that is pleasing to the eye.  And being a layout designer with some graphic training & a lot of scrapbooking experience, I know that using touches of the same colors or same shapes in a triangle pattern around your canvas, paper or container, helps the eye travel around your creation in a pleasing manner.  For me, it's easiest to use 3 similar or identical items and arrange them in a triangle.  So I did this with my mirror-ball ornaments, placing them gently into the garland and beads.  Next, I arranged the 3 picks in a triangle around the bowl, tucking the ends into the garland.  Last I took my small ornaments in various shades of blue & white and used them in little groupings around the larger mirror-ball ornaments.  I used the principle of odd numbered items here too.  While placing the small ornaments, I considered their color and tried to place each group of them in a triangular shape around the bowl.

TIP

Now, when I talk about placing the items in a triangle, I'm not saying that you should be exact and place everything very symmetrically into your centerpiece.  For this arrangement, I placed the smaller ornaments in a triangle around the bowl, nestling them in around the larger mirror-ball ornaments, but not in exactly the same spots, just in close approximation.  Check out my photo and look for the "same color" small ornaments to see what I mean.  The arrangement should have the colors and shapes, well placed to help the eye travel all around it, but it should also not be obvious that you were trying to create a triangle in your arrangement.  If it helps you to create a very symmetrical arrangement first, that's great.  Then try moving your elements around just a bit, so that they look like they just happen to have fallen into their places and weren't placed there with the precision of a magnifying glass & measuring tape.  It may take a little work to be happy with the placement of your elements, but I think that if you take a some time moving your elements and looking at them again & again, you'll find a look that's pleasing to you.

I hope you enjoy my centerpiece and learning a little about creating your own centerpieces.  Sign up to follow me or have my posts emailed to your inbox and you'll be among the first to learn more about decorating around your own home.

If you're interested in the items I used to create my centerpiece, please visit my Willow House Website.  And if you'd like to receive my monthly Willow House newsletter, featuring design ideas, recipes and the latest sale & special news, leave me a comment saying so here, with your email address.  I also have a Willow House Facebook page, where you can "LIKE" me and get fun decorating ideas & sale info. in your news feed.

Thank you for following JulieChats and I hope you enjoy my new creative direction.  I'm planning to share papercrafting ideas along with decorating tips & projects each week.  Stay tuned for all the news on my Scrapbook Studio reorganizing project.

The Mediterranean Sage Bowl is featured in the new Spring/Summer 2011 Willow House Catalog and will be available for sale January 1, 2011.  The bowl sells for $69.96 and is microwave, dishwasher and oven safe.  It is large, measuring 15" in diameter and 4 3/4" high.  In addition to creating a centerpiece in my new bowl, I used it to hold a big salad for Christmas dinner.

Leave comments here or email me at willowhousejulie@aol.com anytime.  You don't need to be invited to a party to order from my website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  And when you stop by my website and click "Shop Online," don't miss the Online Outlet featuring tons of mark down items and showcasing Weekly Specials that change every Monday.  Items will be delivered directly to your home and when you spend $40 or more (including regular and outlet priced items), you qualify to receive one regular priced catalog item up to $40 for 1/2 price.  So stock up on outlet items and get your favorite catalog item for 50% off!!!