A welcoming heart

My new favorite thing is to decorate doors and doorways because I want them to shout "welcome to my home!" - er...not literally shout of course, that would frighten everyone away, but you know what I mean.

Inspired by maya*made's newspaper heart bunting and CraftSylish's snowstorm I jumbled the two ideas together and came up with a dangling window decoration perfect for welcoming visitors into the heart of the home.

First I had to find newspaper - I don't subscribe to it so I tracked down a county publication letting all county residents know about things going on - search and rescue volunteering, 4-H events, bicycle trails maps, etc. Not exactly romantic, but it works. Using a wee little heart-shaped cookie cutter as a guide, I penciled around the shape and cut them out. Cutting them on a fold would have saved some time, but I didn't remember to try that until I was basically finished! That figures.

Since the paper was lacking in story charm I made a wash using Delta Ceramcoat acrylic paint in Tomato Spice mixed with a little water and coated my paper hearts. The papers curled themselves up and uncurled themselves in a very entertaining manner but I made sure to move them around while they were still wet so they wouldn't stick to the grocery ad I was using as countertop protection. My wash came out a little more watery than I intended so I ended up painting on three coats to get the look I wanted.

Since I already had the floss cut to the correct length for the door window from the snowstorm project, I simply removed the white dots and reused the floss from that. Thankfully the dots were super easy to unstick from each other.

I adhered two hearts back to back using regular gluestick glue and making sure the floss was directly in the middle. I tried to space them randomly but it doesn't really look like I succeeded does it?

I'm sorry I can't offer a photo of them when they are put up, but with the window light behind them you will only be able to see dark, vaguely heart-shaped blobs and it's really not very inspiring that way.

On the front of the door I'm hanging this grapevine wreath I've had kicking around here that I tied red and gold ribbon scraps left over from package wrapping at Christmas time. It's a little funky, but it didn't cost anything and I used up some scraps. Plus I love having that splash of color on the door now that the Christmas wreath is gone.

Admittedly it did not take a great deal of thought or effort, but isn't that the beauty of it?

Speaking of wreaths I love this one done by Sarah at Thrifty Decor Chick.

Are you doing anything to make your entry welcoming?