diy valentine photo garland

Happy February friends! 

Oh February the month of love, of hearts and candy, of long a$$ gloomy days and bitter cold nights.....yep. February.  It's not my fave.

To get through these 28 days of meh (minus my sweetie pie niece's birthday and all February born friends!) I like to get out some hearts and glitter and dress the house up a bit.

I went downstairs to my cave of décor to look for my Valentine swag and found that I had way less than I thought I did.  So what does one do when they don't have enough festive décor?  One makes some, of course.

I wanted a little garland for my mantle since it has been so bare and sad since it was scalped of its Christmas finery.  I cruised Pinterest for some ideas and found a few but nothing really hit the mark.

I did see one with teeny clothespins that I liked, and if you follow me on Instagram, you might remember I used some in my Christmas décor

I really liked that little vignette, so I decided to use that as a jumping off point for my new garland.  

I don't have many "valentine" pics of my kids, but I have stand outs that really make me smile.  I cruised through my photos and picked out some winners- some of them together and some individuals.

I cropped each photo into a heart shape and changed them to black and white versions- I use CorelDraw for all of my design work.  

I laid out the cropped pictures onto an 8.5 x 11 to run them through my printer.

When printing these use something heavier than regular printer paper, or else mount it to something with more substance like cardstock, craft foam or cardboard.

I didn't have any cardstock in my craft supply stash, but I did have some canvas photo papers that I bought at the good ol' dollar store years ago. 

Cut them out.....

Grab some teeny clothespins (dollar store, again!)

attach some twine or ribbon to the mantle (I secured it with some washi tape) and clip up those pieces of your heart.

So simple and easy.

And cheap!  This garland probably cost me about $2.

And since I used the canvas paper, it will be used year after year.....

and I can enjoy glimpses of my little valentines through the years.

I'll be back to share the other little festive touches I've put up this month to celebrate Valentine's day and to distract me from the fact that it is, indeed, February.

Love and chocolates,

Laura

ps.  I wrote this to the sweet sounds of my favorite new playlist on Spotify- go to Enjoying the Small Things and check out Kelle's valentine playlist.  I love it.