For the second Iron Craft challenge this year we were to do something with hearts.
My daughters and I made this heart garland. We took a piece of the stiff glittery felt and cut them in half (so they were approximately 8.5x5.5) and then each half I cut into strips (about one inch wide). Then, my daughters sewed (they're working on learning basic hand sewing, you could use hot glue or even staples if you wanted) the narrow end of two strips with the right sides together (this becomes the top center of the heart). Then, we sewed the other two ends wrong sides together. The felt needed a little shaping still after doing that, don't worry about it for now. We did that with all of the felt.
I got out some pink, white and red heart shaped beads and some fishing line. One girl worked on one end of the line and the other worked on the opposite end. They strung some beads and then using a needle threaded with the fishing line would add a heart. We went through both sides of the heart as well as the inner point of it, it's better if it's a bit closer to the top, I think, so it's less likely to flip upside down. Then more beads and more hearts until we were done with the hearts. On the ends of the fishing line, I threaded one more bead and made a loop around that bead (so the bead is trapped in the loop) to keep everything from sliding off the end and to give me something to hang it with.
After doing that and hanging it, I noticed the beads had a tendency to slide and squish the hearts, so I got out my glue gun and put a little dot of glue on the heart where the fishing line went through to keep it in place. This also helped a bit with the tendency to flip. Start in the middle and work your way out to both ends. They still flip some, so I'm going to add some weights to the bottom (one I glued a bead in and that worked pretty well, but you can see it, so I'm going to try to get some fishing weights and hide them a bit more).
Overall the girls did it in a few hours and had a lot of fun doing it.
