Valentine Mantel

Hi everyone!
It's been a though week with the mister sick and at home all these days. The son got sick too, and just yesterday I began feeling all the same flu symptoms they were experiencing at the beginning of the week  :s I'm not liking it!

I was working on a garland for this mantel but it didn't work at all. Have you been there? I know you have! Very disappointing, but I like the turning point I went through because it came out better than expected.

The thing is, I love this garland! After the Upcycled heart art I think this is my favorite part of this mantel ;) Those are lunch bag paper flowers. I first saw these kind of flowers on Carol's Fall mantel, but you can find the full tutorial Emily has right HERE for how to make them.

My variation came by adding two extra sheets of red polka-dot wrapping paper, it's back is also brown which makes it blend very well, both pieces of extra paper were positioned right in the middle of the others with the polka-dots facing each other. I used a heavy duty stapler to secure all those folds.

After fluffing them, and in order to hang them from the piece of jute ribbon on the mantel, very small metal clips were camouflaged with two hearts on the same type of paper.

The XOXO garland is one of those dollar finds at Target, I replaced the red ribbon it came with by a piece of jute rope.

Candles, candle sticks, and pine cones are the items I chose to decorate my mantel this year, kind of rustic with opaque red accents.

Heart candle votives my daughter created bring some more of that Valentine flair.

My old tree stump table got covered with a sea-grass runner I bought last year at Marshals, the leather accessories came from one of my bags ;) it was so old I had to throw it away but not without removing all those little details I loved so much and that were still in perfect shape.

A small bouquet, three of my paper flowers, made it here too, its vase, a wooden spool.

The small pillow got "Valentinezed" with a simple embroidered heart.

I was kind of surprised when after taking off the slipcover the chair had sported for so long, I found out the same circle pattern as in the heart :)

It looks like it was all meant to be ;)

XOXO,

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