I want candy!!

I'm not a huge Valentine's Day fan, but I'll use any excuse to be able to decorate the house in pink that I can and not get any slack for it! So since V-day is right around the corner I thought I would make a few V-day related crafts to put around the house. Starting with these bad boys (see above, sorry...the lighting was crap the day I took these photos!). I saw these whilst perusing the Martha Stewart website trying to find cookie recipes. What are they? They're bonbon-filled hearts! Ok, so mine aren't filled with bonbons. I opted to fill mine up with the must-have cinnamon heart candies and large conversation hearts, as well as seasonally wrapped Hershey Hugs and Kisses, jelly beans (in pinks, reds, and white of course!), and just for Brett - peanut M&Ms!

These darling little hearts are super easy to make and are truly easy on the wallet, which is great if you don't want to spend a lot of moola (or any) on decorations for such a day as Valentine's. I used leftover card stock from Christmas and scrapbooking card stock, that for some weird reason I had laying around in my sewing closet. The ribbons were from my stash and all I needed to purchase was the candy. Brett and I are both chocolate lovers and so V-day related sweets were bound to cross our threshold, so I figured why not have a cute way of holding our edible goods (not to mention easy access!) instead of having the stockpile scattered all over the computer desk?

You can find the directions to make your own here. But I must warn you, some steps really aren't clear. Like in step 7: Slide fold A behind fold B. The diagram shows absolutely nothing. So take note that what Martha wants you to do is to align the folded parts that's in the middle together so that they are one and you end up with 2 compartments. Another useful tip: the so-called heart template on the website is a useless thumbnail photo, so what I did was trace the outline of my folded up square (so you know how big your template needs to be) on another piece of paper, cut it out, fold the template paper diagonally so that you have a triangle shape, and draw your own heart. Cut that out and voilà! You've got yourself a template without having to waste a million sheets of paper trying to get Martha's version to match your square.

I like these so much that I'm thinking of getting some pastel colored card stock and making a few for Easter. I'm not sure if I'd cut out a heart shape, maybe turn them into cones and then embellishing them to jazz them up a bit. The beauty of this project is that you can make the holders as big or as small as you want. I can already picture mine holding Cadbury mini eggs, foil-wrapped egg shaped chocolates...and big ones with shredded green paper to cradle decorated eggs...ooohhh...the possibilities!