Let the Countdown Begin!

Hi All! It's February 1st! Time to wish my sister a happy birthday: Happy Birthday, Kris! 

It's also time to get rolling on our countdown to Valentine's Day. WOO HOO!!

First off, I have a little perpetual countdown flip stand that I made using a little stand from Ikea and a boatload of stuff from my stash. So let's start with day 14:

This stand was pretty easy to put together--just patterned paper, book rings and LOTS of layers. And remember, if Valentine's Day is not your gig, a little countdown stand like this would be great for anything you want to celebrate: a birthday, a big vacation, retirement, whatever strikes your fancy. 

Now, on to our first project! I thought I'd start with my feather tree, which will be gaining ornaments and bling throughout the next two weeks. I love my little tree, it stays up year round. However, I've never tried to photograph it before. This, my friends, turned out to be a much more daunting task than expected. First, it's just a wee tree, so it doesn't really stand out in a photo all that well. Add to that the lack of wall space without a window (normally a very GOOD thing), and well…not the best photo shoot. So here it is:

 My wee tree is sporting the first of our projects: a simple heart banner. From start to finish, this project took maybe 20 minutes. I used my Cricut Gypsy (feel free to use Cricut Craft Room) to weld two 1-inch hearts together at the top. I then cut out about 30 of them from Cranberry Cardstock by Close To My Heart. I used a white gel pen to write L-O-V-E in different fonts and doodled little hearts in between. I then folded the hearts in half and adhered them to bakers twine. Voilà! A cute little string of garland. You could adjust the size and use the same technique for a banner for a mantle or window. Also, you could use white opaque ink and alphabet stamps if you'd rather not doodle your own letters.

Here's some close ups of the hearts:

And if you string it on the tree just right, you can get your little message across with no trouble:

I hope you enjoyed today's quick and easy garland. Don't forget to stop back by tomorrow and see what else we have in store during our countdown to Valentine's Day. And remember: Monday, February 3rd we'll be joining in the Rose Blossom Blog Hop. You definitely don't want to miss it!