Poshta Presents - Paper Heart Sachets

Good morning, Poshta Friends! Happy Thursday! It's time for another installment of Poshta Presents. We have another delightful project to share with you made by the talented Kelly Raines. Read on the learn how Kelly created her beautiful paper heart garden.

Hello! Kelly here! For me, there’s nothing better than a heartfelt, handmade Valentine. In remembering Valentine’s Day crafts from my childhood I was reminded of paper hearts so while I was stitching felt hearts I had the idea to use my Poshta Design Basic Heart dies to create hearts out of paper too. They are fun and easy to make and I love the texture you get by combining paper and felt. I am so excited to share this project with you and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! 

Using the Basic Heart die set, I cut the large heart from double sided cardstock. Using the running stitch and three strands of coordinating DMC floss, l started stitching midway on one of the sides and across the top of the heart until I was midway down the opposite side. I stuffed the top of the heart with poly-fil and continued stitching down to the bottom point of the heart and adding poly-fil as I went just like I would if I were making a felt ornament.  The key is to not overstuff the hearts and to keep your stitches tight but not so tight that you rip the cardstock.  The thread slips through the paper easier than with felt so I held onto the tails of my thread for several stitches when starting each heart. After completing the running stitch around the hearts I tied and knotted the ends together and trimmed tails as close as I could to the edge. Since I used double sided cardstock I stitched some of the hearts together so that the front and back are a different print. I used my hot glue gun to add a felt flower, using Cardinal, Tundra, and Chantilly felt and the Floral Hearts Details dies to embellish one of the hearts and the “hugs” die from the Conversation Hearts Messages dies to stitch on another heart. I had a roll of craft paper on hand but a brown paper bag would also work well. I used Black Versafine Ink and various stamps to decorate the craft paper hearts and then stitched them together as described above.  I decided to stamp all the hearts with black ink and stitched them together with the same red DMC floss but you could easily use different ink and thread colors and add felt or any other embellishments and they would be adorable!

The felt hearts in this project are actually lavender filled sachets. I am very fortunate to have a local shop in my area that grows and dries their own lavender. I spent quite a bit of time exploring this lovely shop and chatting with one of the owners. I explained my idea to him and he shared a lot of great information which was so helpful when creating the sachets. As suggested, the heart sachets are filled with a mix of dried lavender and flax seed. The flax seed is a good filler that helps add weight but does not have a scent like rice or other fillers. I wanted to use beautiful pastels for this project and the Vintage Charm Color Story was perfect! This color story includes Chantilly, Glacier, Pea Pod, Satin Slipper and Rendezvous felt, the coordinating DMC floss, beads and sequins and I added a touch of Cardinal felt. 

The heart sachets are stitched together with the running stitch and three strands of floss. I used a demitasse spoon to fill the sachets with the lavender and flax seed mixture, my craft space smelled amazing! The owner also gave a cute gift idea to create a sachet you can tuck into your pillowcase, which I happily made along with a matching tag! I love that I can use my Poshta dies to make handmade gifts like these!