A Valentine’s card with the world at its heart. #ShowtheLove
This Valentine’s Day we have made these simple cards to give to friends and family and help spread a little love! I was inspired by the Climate Coalition’s #ShowtheLove campaign and also the Woodland Trust’s Charter for Trees. They are asking that we make a green heart to wear or to place a green heart on a tree and state why woods are special places to us. Our special trees can be added to the Charter by the end of February, have a look at www.thewoodlandtrust.org.uk for more information.
I thought I would incorporate this with the act of sowing seeds. Of planting new. Making a difference. These handmade paper seed hearts are very quick and simple to make and my son loved the squishy, messy part!
You will need: some paper, a shredder/scissors, a bowl, a stick blender (optional but it makes the job a lot easier!), a heart cookie cutter, some muslin, pegs, an old tray. You will also need some card and paints etc, depending on how you want to decorate the card.
First we took some shredded paper from the recycle bin. We used a mixture of green and white but you could use a more traditional red or just anything you happen to have (if you don’t have a shredder just cut or tear into small pieces).
We added a little water and blitzed the mixture with a stick blender.
We then sprinkled in some poppy seeds in memory of my baby boy but you could use any seeds, a woodland flower mix would be lovely.
Now for the squishy part! I set up a muslin cloth over a deep baking tray and then we took little handfuls of the mixture and pressed them into the heart cookie cutter, carefully lifting it to leave the heart behind. You need to make sure the hearts aren’t too thin as they will crack when they dry. This small amount of paper made 12 hearts.
Once they were all pressed out onto the muslin, I pulled it tight and pegged it to the rim of the tray. This allowed any water to drain and the air to flow so the hearts dried quicker. (You can get proper paper-making frames but this set up worked well).
The hearts dried over night but probably would have dried more quickly if they’d been in a warmer room –our storage heaters don’t kick out much heat!
We painted a green wash of watercolour on some card and lightly glued the hearts on with a little message cut from newspaper.
I love this quote, my Mum gave me a bookmark with it on and it is one I hold dear. There are many words that could be written to go with these seed hearts -love blossoming like a flower is imagery often conjured up when thinking of Valentine’s Day. Here are a few quotes:
The Earth laughs in flowers. ~ Ralph Emerson
Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow. ~ John Lennon
When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
We are going to leave a few heart cards under our favourite trees on Valentine’s Day (providing it’s not raining!) with a message and instructions for the finder to place the heart on the bare Earth and let the world’s love grow!
