The Apple Street Cottage

This post may contain affiliate links. We've all seen them.  The faux tiles at the dollar store.  Over the holidays I saw so many cut into the shape of a Christmas tree, but my thoughts moved ahead to Valentine's Day sooo, here we go! These faux tiles have an adhesive back and since they are pretty thin, I cut a heart from chipboard , using my Maker , to give it more stability.   It was placed on the back (the adhesive side) of the tile. Using an craft knife on a cutting mat , the heart was cut out. Easy peasy, right?  WRONG!  When I turned it over I discovered the adhesive sheet wasn't stuck to the back of the tile! WHAT? Here's a little PSA.  The adhesive backing only sticks to the outside edge of the tile.  Once you cut a shape (that doesn't include an edge) your tile has gone 'free-range'!  Take another look: The other side of the adhesive sheet was definitely sticking to the chipboard, though. On to Plan B: Peel the adhesive sheet off t...

If you visited the Cottage on facebook this week, you saw a 'teaser' for this project.  Go on, go take a peek, I'll wait!   I don't know about where you live, but, around here, grapevines grow wild all over and, since most of my 'stuff' is still packed in a storage unit, I decided to use what was available.  I grabbed my clippers, went out back, and started clipping long lengths of grapevines.  It was really cold, so, let me tell you, I clipped pretty quickly! They still had some leaves... And some great curlicues... I grabbed a few from the pile and made this: You can't tell from the picture, but this heart is pretty big - about 26" across and 29" tall.  I twisted together three vines for each side.  I used a piece of jute twine to tie them together in the middle, slowly bent the vines until  the were joined at the bottom, where another piece of jute twine completed the heart.  It probably took about 5 minutes, you know, one ...