Dogwood Heart Wall Decoration

I had such fun creating our frugal foraged Christmas wreath, and I had some dogwood left over so I had a long look at, wondering what I could create from it.  The lovely crimson colour of it spoke to me.  And Valentine’s Day was approaching.  I knew the wood was plyable  and so I had a try at making a Valentine’s wall decoration.  Much to my delight, it turned out beautifully!

A big bonus was that this foraged dogwood heart wall decoration is extremely frugal!  It cost only pennies to make, but is filled with my love.

I think there’s a reason that Valentine’s Day falls in the middle of winter, just after the excitement of Christmas has calmed down.  We need something to look forward to in the winter darkness, and an excuse to brighten up our hearts and our homes.  However, we need not spend a lot to do this.  I love my husband but I don’t need to spend a fortune on him for him to know this (at least I hope not!).

The supplies for this dogwood heart wreath are few:

dogwood, raffia, wire, and snips.

If you can’t get your hands on any dogwood, you can use willow or another pliable type of branch.  I love the bright red burgundy of the dogwood branches in the winter, they are striking outdoors, and just as cheery indoors.

First, find a couple of  branches that are relatively straight.  Clip off any smaller branches if you need to.   I began by wiring the smaller ends together like so.  You can use more than one branch for each side of the heart it you’d like it to be more full.

Then I carefully bent the pieces of the dogwood around to form a heart and wired the thicker ends together to form the bottom of the heart.

I don’t have photos of this project in progress as I needed both hands, but it wasn’t to difficult to do.

Now you have the basic structure of this craft done!  Add a little raffia or ribbon around the joins to hide the wire.  Add a loop to the top of the heart for hanging and you’ve completed a dogwood heart for your love!

I enjoyed this process so much that I wasn’t ready to stop, so I continued on making another two hearts in smaller sizes using smaller branches.

I used the raffia again to hang the smallest heart inside the large heart, and the medium-sized heart below.

Have fun with this love decoration and personalise it to suit you and your home and love.  Add some wrapped chocolates, pom-poms, or some little family photos.  dangling from the hearts to make it fun.  I like to keep things simple, so for now this is how mine hangs.

I made this heart over a year ago, and it still hangs in our front room.  You really can’t beat the beauty of nature!

To help spread the love this Valentine’s Day, our Jam-Jam cookies are delicious and pretty.  Lavender tartan hearts are both also both lovely and practical (you can use them as drawer or car fresheners).  And the children will enjoy making a tissue paper heart. As we add more activities, you’ll be able to find them all on our Valentine’s Day page.