Conversation Hearts

I love making my own embellishments.  The creative challenge of making an embellishment instead of purchasing that embellishment at the store is really a fun exercise for me.  Enamel dots are all the rage these days and they are fun to make and use.  But dots just won't do for Valentine's Day!

 The Valentine's cards I am making are calling out for enamel hearts so..........I decided to make my own.  I purchased these assorted color bling hearts from Joann.com (they may sell these in the store, but I ordered mine online for $2.49 for a bag of 78 hearts in assorted sizes).  Next I  painted the hears with white paint.  I did this to take away some of the translucency of the hearts. You can skip this step, but it may take you more coats of nail polish to give the hearts that enamel look.  Next I stuck two flat-topped toothpicks in a piece of foam packaging and put a glue dot on top of each toothpick. I did this so I could affix the heart on top of the toothpick in preparation for painting them with nail polish.  Next, I took out my collection of nail polish (most purchased at the Dollar Tree) and started painting the hearts.  Most colors only took two coats to achieve the enamel look I was after.  

The next challenge in this project was to find stamps small enough to fit on the medium, medium large and large size hearts.  I used my Papertrey Ink Tiny Tags and Tiny Tags II to stamp on the hearts with StazOn ink.  It is important to use a permanent ink that is formulated for slick surfaces - otherwise whatever you stamp on the hearts will wipe right off.

That's it.  Really fun and cute embellishments.

Thanks for visiting my blog and let me know if you have any questions.