How to Make 3D Paper Hearts for Valentine's Day

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

These 3D paper hearts are the perfect decoration for a perfect day!

My favorite projects are the ones that I can make with the supplies that I already have entirely on-hand… and my second-favorite projects are the ones that I can easily recycle, upcycle, compost, or otherwise entirely dispose of with little effort if I decide I no longer want them. Because although I love decorating for a holiday, I think I like taking down all those decorations afterwards and enjoying my (relatively) clutter-free home even more!

This cute 3D paper heart project encompasses both of my favorite things! Use any of your favorite papers (in these photos, I’m using vintage book pages) to craft these pretty paper hearts, and after Valentine’s Day, pop them into your paper recycling, upcycle them as greeting card or scrapbook embellishments, or shred them and mix them into your compost. Just between us, I don’t even shred them first, because I am a VERY lazy lasagna gardener.

Or keep them on display forever, because they’re just that cute!

Materials

To make these 3D paper hearts, you will need the following supplies:

• pretty papers. You need enough paper for 8-12 hearts, depending on how full you want your finished 3D heart to look. I’m using pages from a vintage book, but scrapbook paper would also be SOOO pretty. With larger hearts, the paper tends to curl if it’s very thin, so avoid lightweight papers like newspaper or wrapping paper for bigger hearts, or place thicker paper between the glued sheets to strengthen them. Cardstock would be perfect for a very large version, or even thin cardboard food packaging for a supersized version!
• heart template. You can freehand this or print out your favorite clip art, but since you’ll be making several identical cut-outs per finished 3D heart, you’ll want something to trace.
• tracing and cutting tools. A pencil and some scissors, or whatever you’ve got on hand!
• glue of your choice. A glue stick is my favorite glue for working with paper, but with all that plastic it’s not very eco-friendly, is it? SIGH! Fortunately, nearly any glue works well here. PVA glue takes a while to dry and you have to be vigilant to avoid curling, but it’s got much less plastic packaging than glue sticks do. Hot glue is in between, eco-wise, but it also dries nearly instantly and won’t cause curling.

Step 1: Cut out the paper hearts.

For the project in these photos, I’m using an 8″ wide template for the larger heart, and a 3″ wide template for the smaller one.

Gotta pay better attention to what I'm cutting out. Tuberculosis is so romantic, lol!

Trace and cut the number of paper hearts that you’ll want for your 3D version. The more hearts you use, the fuller your 3D heart will look. And the bigger your heart, the more hearts you’ll need to fill it out! For my smaller version, I used eight cut-outs and I think the end result is perfect. For my larger version, I used 12 cut-outs and I think I could have gone with at least 16 to have it look a little more full.

Step 2: Fold all the cut-outs in half.

If your cut-out is double-sided, take some time to choose which side you want to be visible in the finished product, and fold that side to the inside. The outside sides are what you’ll glue, and you won’t see them when you’re done.

Try to be as precise as you can with your folding, putting it right down the center of each cut-out, and crease the center fold well.

Step 3: Glue all the cut-outs together.

Here’s another place where you want to be so very precise!

Spread glue across one folded side of a cut-out, then stack the next cut-out exactly on top of it, pressing down to make sure that the two papers are adhered all over.

Spread glue across the folded side of the cut-out that’s now at the top of your stack, and stack the next cut-out exactly on top of that one, again pressing and smoothing to make sure the papers are well adhered.

Repeat until every cut-out is stacked and glued.

Step 4: Fluff out the finished product so the papers look nice.

Page through the whole stack of cut-outs and make sure that no glue bled through or seeped between the edges of the paper, and that none of the pages that aren’t glued are stuck together.

If you want to make your finished 3D heart into an ornament, you can insert a twine loop between the last two pages, then glue them together to seal it in. I, however, really like these opened up as a wall decoration, or, for the smaller hearts, glued to the front of a handmade valentine.

I kind of want to make a REALLY big one to put on my front door!

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I Saw a Unicorn and Got My Playbill Signed By the Gods in New York City

New York City is a crazy place. Why is there everything that you'd ever want to see or do there, and it's all easily accessible via public transportation? And people just LIVE there like that's a completely normal way to exist!!! 

A place like Indiana must seem absolutely fucking miserable to a New Yorker. When a New Yorker is bored, they can go get cheap dumplings or ride the subway somewhere cool or visit a museum or go to a show or just walk around and people watch. When I'm bored, I have to resort to stupid shit like poking around in my garden or taking the dog for a hike or wandering around the mall and not buying stuff. Our lives are NOT the same.

Ah, well. One more full day to pretend to be a real New Yorker by doing all the touristy, non-New Yorker things I can fit into the schedule!

On this day, after the obligatory bagels for breakfast (you put too much cream cheese on your bagels, New York!), my partner polled the kids to see if they'd rather go see Stonewall National Monument or the unicorn tapestries. I think they'd have loved both, but unicorns were the winners this time. 

We'll pay our respects next time, Stonewall!

The Met Cloisters was quite the hike from our Times Square-adjacent hotel, but I think it might be my favorite place in New York City. Y'all know what a freak I am for the Medieval period (if you want me to send you Margery Kempe memes message me your cell number!), and here was a lovely little museum simply chock-full of Medieval and ONLY Medieval art! 

I'm especially fond of Medieval depictions of critters, such as this completely realistic lion that the artist has definitely seen before:

Spanish, Castile-Leon, circa 1200. My favorite part is its mustache!

Also, a dragon that is literally eating a guy!

North German, circa 1200

Another dragon, but this one's got chicken feet and a very sassy expression on its face:

Spanish, Castile-Leon, circa 1200

We apparently don't quite know what the deal is with this particular two-headed critter, just that William of Orange is stabbing it:

There are two types of museum-goers in my family. The first type looks at everything really fast and then sits around, bored, and contemplates killing the rest of us. Thank goodness for my museum buddy who's also of the second type!

We look at EVERYTHING. AND we read its label. And we take each other's pictures looking at the best stuff so we can prove we were there. 

King Arthur!

This is supposed to be either Hector of Troy or Alexander the Great.

I also like Medieval manuscripts:

The Romance of the Rose, French, 1340

This stained glass window apparently used to live in Canterbury Cathedral!

Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, 1180

But here's what we really came to see:

The Unicorn Defends Himself

These were astounding, although I wish the unicorn would have kicked those hunters' asses rather than getting killed. I love how it's depicted as A Definitely Real Unicorn That Really Exists, and in the corner of the gallery was also displayed a narwhal tooth, which I would certainly have 100% believed was a real unicorn horn if nobody had told me about narwhals.

I'm so curious about this mending. It's very visible, so perhaps it's also historic, or perhaps it was done purposefully so you could see the evidence of historical wear:

The Hunters Return to the Castle

The peaceful scenes are the best, though. Fuck those hunters!

The Unicorn Rests in a Garden

The Unicorn Purifies Water

Love this guy:

As the other two were finally dragging the big kid and I by our ears out of the museum, my partner said, "I wonder if anyone ever comes here twice?", thinking, I guess, about how out-of-the-way and very much up-the-hill it is. But I swear that if I lived here I'd come to the Met Cloisters every day just to say hi to the unicorns, maybe take a little peek at St. Michael slaying the demons, sneak into a guided tour or two, and then head back down the hill and down the block for this huge slice of pizza that was so freaking delicious and I swear to god it cost four dollars:

Sufficiently fueled, we took the subway back downtown and back to this Times Square-adjacent location just cattycorner from our hotel, because no matter that I'd already seen unicorns and eaten pizza--my day was about to get even better!

This trip was the coming together of a couple of dreams. Y'all already know that I love musicals, and that Hadestown has long been my favorite by far. Y'all don't need me to start waxing tearfully poetic about how meaningful I find this work of art that celebrates the beauty of knowing that your efforts are futile, but nevertheless trying as hard as you can. You don't need to do something because you think you'll win--you just need to do it because it's the right thing to do. Also, the beauty of telling the same story over and over, even if you don't like the ending, because the meaning isn't in the ending--it's in the telling. 

Ugh, you guys, I just love Hadestown so much.

And currently, the little kid's favorite actor is playing Orpheus. How could we pass up a chance for her to see Jack Wolfe in person, and for me to see Hadestown again, and for the other two to also come and hang out with us in New York City?

Money comes back, but life is made of memories:

Jack Wolfe didn't come out to the admittedly absolutely madhouse-level stagedoor afterwards, which was a bummer but omg COMPLETELY understandable, because OMG that crowd! However, we were super excited to see Paulo Szot--

--and Kurt Elling--

--and Allison Russell--

--which means that we got our playbills signed by all the gods!

Interestingly, the news just dropped last week that this cast's final performance of Hadestown is March 1. As the little kid and I were talking about it, I theorized that wouldn't it be cool if Jack Wolfe was headed back to the West End, where The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is now running. Wolfe played The Balladeer in a previous run of the show, and I joked that if he ended up as The Balladeer again I'd have to start looking for plane tickets.

"You wouldn't go without me?!?", the kid gasped.

Money comes back, but life is made of memories!

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Shall I Cross-Stitch You a Bookmark? Because I I Can Cross-Stitch Bookmarks Now!

These bookmarks are going into the kids' Valentine's Day care packages. Each one matches its recipient's school color!

Lit Stitch: 25 Cross-Stitch Patterns for Book Lovers by Book Riot
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The thing about cross-stitch that I’m still not sure about is its focus on decoration. I mostly sew, and any sewing book, even one confined to quilting, will always have a variety of projects, some decorative, but most useful in some way. You’ll get instructions for the odd wall hanging, sure, but you’ll also get pillow covers and zippered bags and pot holders and clothing items and everything else practical and impractical under the sun. So I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that a cross-stitch book seems to generally just show you the actual cross-stitch pattern, and it’s up to you to figure out what to do with it. I feel like you absolutely CAN do a ton of things with a finished cross-stitch, especially something like those pillow covers and zippered bags, maybe even ornaments and patches and embellishments, but it adds more mental work to the process, especially when all I want to do when I see a pattern I like is to literally just stitch it, not try to imagine what its actual purpose in my life will be.

So that’s part of the reason why I ended up stitching multiples of the BOOKS! bookmark pattern. For one thing, I really like the font. And for another, I know what to do with a bookmark!

I didn’t love the book’s instructions for finishing the bookmark, but tbh I didn’t love the way I decided to finish the bookmarks, either. The two bookmarks that I stitched onto Aida I backed with felt and blanket stitched with embroidery floss around the perimeter. The bookmark that I stitched onto burlap I backstitched to the felt and frayed the excess. Neither method looked as tidy as I wanted it to, especially compared to how precise cross-stitching looks to the eye. So if you’ve got a sure-fire, go-to way to finish a cross-stitch bookmark, please let me know!

Backed with felt and midway through its blanket-stitching. I feel like the knots are SO visible!

I loved the font used for the BOOKS! bookmark so much that I was super bummed to see that the book does not contain a complete alphabet in that font. I feel like every craft book that contains a word art project should have to also publish a full alphabet in that font, just in case you like it so much you want to make your own words with it… which in this case I did! Fortunately, with graph paper and plenty of erasing, I did figure out how to make the other letters I needed look like the BOOKS! font. The “A” is maybe a little wonky, but whatever.

Despite the wonky knots, I am so pleased with how this bookmark turned out! I drew F, I, and A patterns to match the font, calculated how to divide seven colors by five letters, and matched the rainbow in the blanket-stitching. I then mailed it to my niece in a box also containing two Eyewitness books and two size 6 T-shirts... and the USPS lost it. I'm waiting to hear from you, Mail Recovery Center!

After reading this book, here are the things that I now know how to do:
* Figure out how many strands of floss to use, within a limited range. I can definitely now eyeball when I need two strands vs. three strands, at least.
* Substitute colors. When I had the revelation that I did not have to purchase the exact color of DMC floss the pattern calls for if I have a similar color already in my stash, it BLEW MY MIND, lol.

Things that I still do not know how to do:
* Figure out what size the project will be. Should I count all the little squares on the pattern and then count all the little squares on my fabric? Measure the number of squares per inch and multiply?
* Finish a project. Do I bind the edges or anything? Glue them? Put it in a frame or something? The blanket stitching that I used to finish two of my bookmarks was particularly irritating to me, since I couldn’t find an invisible, or even tidy-looking, way to knot the ends of the floss. So all my knots are basically either the biggest, most visible knots ever created… or already falling out. Sigh!

In related news, I both own more bookmarks than I’ll ever need in this lifetime and am obsessed with how quickly cross-stitch bookmarks stitch up and how cute they are. Raise your hand if you want me to cross-stitch you a bookmark, I guess!

P.S. View all my reviews,

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Omega Mart is the Best Thing in Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon is on Fire

I'd already suspected the part about Omega Mart, but it's good to have it confirmed!

The older kid and I have been planning her 21st birthday trip to Las Vegas since long before she was 21. We like spectacle, and oddities, and immersive experiences of all sorts. We like buffets and novelty doughnuts. Resort swimming pools. Wandering around and looking at stuff. 

And it wasn't exactly high culture, but Las Vegas had all of that, more than enough to keep us completely entertained for the four days we spent there. 

But technically, the second thing we did upon arriving in Las Vegas was leave it to drive to the Grand Canyon for 24 hours.

The first thing we did was go to Omega Mart!

The kid and I have been to Otherworld, an immersive experience in Columbus, Ohio, so we sort of knew what we were getting ourselves into. 

Except we didn't, because Omega Mart is beyond anything we've done before. The space is set up as a real-ish grocery store, with both fakey products for display and fakey products that you can really buy.

Such as the spray horse!

You wander around and browse Omega Mart, until perhaps you discover a portal to another dimension. You pass through--

--and you're in another world!

Apparently, these slides used to be functional, but they had to be partially dismantled because they were super dangerous. 

The kid thought that this genuine pay phone was particularly exotic, and she had to be instructed on the steps to use it:

There is a lot of lore involved, including an inexpensive swipe card that you can purchase to get deeper into the backstory, but we were plenty busy (and overstimulated!) this first time just by sightseeing and looky-looing. You can still get pretty far into the lore without the extra steps, anyway:

I swear, though, that I have never been so overstimulated in my life. I was flat-out longing for some Loops, and if they sold them in the Omega Mart I bet they'd make bank!

Can you have an immersive art installation without an infinity mirror? Experience tells me no.

After a couple of hours, hopefully you can find out how to portal yourself back into Omega Mart, and then you'll find that somehow you still haven't seen all the things there are to see there!

Eventually, we bravely made our way back into the furnace that was Las Vegas in mid-July, discovering that the city is nearly as weird outside as it is inside Omega Mart--

So much space alien theming in Las Vegas! I'd sort of wanted to go to a specific spot I'd heard about where you can park and see the JANET flights take off and land at the Las Vegas airport, but we didn't have time.

I am unabashedly looking forward to the Sphere THE MOST!!! It's so giant and stupid!

--and after hitting up the grocery store for water, sunscreen, peanut butter, bread, and tampons--you know, all the essentials!--it's off to the Grand Canyon...

...with a pit stop at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area Visitor Center:

Back in tropical weather, just a month after our last palm tree sighting!

I LOVE myself a giant topographic map. You can see right where we are!

And where we are is right here!

I'd wanted to detour over to the Hoover Dam, and I'm not gonna lie, it's because I wanted to buy a "This is My Dam T-Shirt" from the gift shop, but I ALSO wanted to see the sun set over the Grand Canyon. Natural wonders won over the wonder of human engineering, so off we drove:

One of my favorite things about traveling is renting a car with a nice, big screen for the GPS and a Bluetooth for my Spotify. We listened to so many podcasts on this drive!

Also: new-to-us road trip snacks! This one was gross, but the kid got a Monster slushie that apparently hit.

We were staying overnight at a cabin in Bright Angel Lodge, just steps from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, so our first stop wasn't even a glorious natural wonder, but instead the lobby of the lodge. As my partner was checking us in, the kid and I wandered into the gift shop next door, and look at who I found!

There is a whole series of these books and I'm obsessed with them all, but Death in Yellowstone is my favorite.

You'll be pleased to know that everywhere we went on the next day, I recapped who had died there and how. Did you know that the greatest risk factor in dying in the Grand Canyon is being male? And that a surprising number of those men die from picking up a rattlesnake with their bare hands?

Anyway, this whole time I was REVVED UP to get my first sight of the Grand Canyon, and even more so to see the look on the kid's face when SHE got her first sight of the Grand Canyon. I took her there when she was six, but she doesn't remember it (even though her sister, who was four years old at the time, still does!). So imagine the look on MY face when I look up from browsing Grand Canyon hoodies (I both constantly do not need and constantly desperately want a new hoodie from every tourist attraction I visit) to see that 1) this gift shop has a giant wall that's just a window looking out onto the Grand Canyon, and 2) beyond that window is just... orange-brown nothingness:

Because right. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is currently experiencing a terrible wildfire. I'd been following it on the news, but just because I'm interested in the Grand Canyon, and not because I thought it would affect my visit--the North Rim is a really long way from the South Rim!

But not as far if you're smoke, I guess...

Just... I don't want to be one of those tourists that doesn't give a fuck about the real-world conditions of the place I'm visiting, and the fire is so terrible and destroying a lot of beautiful natural and human-made wonders and the firefighters are risking their lives to try to contain it and everything... but oh, my god, we rented a car and drove for hours and the whole purpose of the Grand Canyon is the view and then we get there and THIS is what we see?!?

Oh, well. A smoky day at the Grand Canyon is better than a clear-sky day sitting at home on my couch!

And the sunset was spectacular:

Tomorrow, we're going to spend the day (hopefully) seeing the sites along the South Rim, then drive back into Las Vegas in the evening.

Here's the rest of our trip!

• Day 1: Omega Mart and Driving to the Grand Canyon
• Day 2: Grand Canyon National Park
• Day 3: Vegas Strip, The Sphere, and the Lake of Dreams
• Day 4: Wynn Buffet, Caesar's Palace, Bellagio Fountains, and Cirque du Soleil
• Day 5: Walking Tour of the Strip and a Red-Eye Home!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!