Swedish Heart Baskets

I created these little Swedish Heart Baskets in order for each person in the family to have a space for little Valentines tokens and notes. I liked the idea of having little Valentine tote bags that fulfill a similar function as a Christmas stocking - but for Valentines day.

Materials:

• Watercolor Paper

• Watercolor Paint

• Brushes

• Scissors

• Hole Puncher

• Yarn or ribbon

Wet-on-Wet Background Painting:

• Begin by prepping the background. The technique you will be using is called "wet-on-wet painting". Dip a large painting brush into clean tap water and use this brush to moisten your watercolor paper with water. Once moist, choose different colors and loosely apply them to the paper using the same big brush. Do not spend too much time adding detail to the page. The colors will merge beautifully on their own - simply by applying them to the wet paper.

• Let your background dry for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Swedish Heart Baskets:

Part 1: Creating half-heart shapes

1. Cut out a half-heart shaped stencil from thin cardboard. As you can see, the stencil does not have to be perfectly geometrical. What is more important is that all of your half-heart shapes are the exact same.

2. Fold your wet-on-wet background paintings in half and trace the stencil onto the folded sheets, so that the folded edge is at the bottom of your half-heart shapes.

3. Use a pencil to find the center of your folded edge. Mark the center with a little line.

4. Then, use a ruler to divide the folded edge into 6 strips of equal width.

5. Cut 6 strips into your half-heart shapes.

Part 2: Weaving the baskets

1. To weave your baskets, position two differently colored half-heart shapes as shown in image 1. Weave pink strip 1 through blue strip 6, around blue 5, through blue 4, around blue 3, and so on.

2. For the next strip, weave pink strip 2 around blue strip 6, through blue strip 5, and so on. Continue until all strips have been used up.

3. While these directions might sound confusing, the weaving process is actually much easier than it looks. Try it!

4. I then used a hole puncher to punch two holes into each heart and hang each heart by threading pink ribbon through the holes.

#naturetable#artsandcrafts#crafting#handmade#waldorfinspired#waldorfart#waldorfhome#jahreszeitentisch#christmascrafts#steinereducation#momlife#momblog#momblogger#adventspiral#waldorfstar#waldorf#waldorfhome#waldorfchristmas#wintersolstice#solstice#ecofriendly#ecochristmas#lowwaste#lowwastechristmas#sustainable#papercrafts