Fan-folded heart

Red fan-folded paper heart.

Valentine’s Day is one week closer. And for those who are looking for something easy, we found it. Fan folded hearts.
Thanks to the Internet again there are many sites to look at for ideas. This one was posted on a blog site called http://blog.craftzine.com/. They have many posts with craft ideas. Some even have links to directions and patterns for the craft shown.
The heart we made pictured above is from a regular size piece of red printer paper. The corners are rounded off to make it look like the shape of a capsule. Then it is fan-folded lengthwise with about one-inch folds for this size paper. To finish, it is folded in half and glued at the center. A string can be added for hanging.
It would be easy to make several dozen of these and hang them in the window for decorations. They are even easy enough to use as a craft project for children.
Complete directions for the fan folded hearts are at http://worldofwhimm.blogspot.com/2009/01/fan-hearts-tutorial.html. Pictures for each step are also shown.
Many types of paper can be used for this project such as: printer paper, wrapping paper, scrapbook paper or even pretty paper bags with cute designs on them. The size can also be changed to smaller or larger depending upon the size of paper.
Other crafts ideas we like at the blog site listed above include: recycled light bulbs made into hanging vases, cards made with scrap trim shaped into flowers, wall art and handspun recycled newspaper yarn.
The direct links to each of these in the order listed above are: http://craftershock.com/blog/2009/01/06/turn-your-old-light-bulbs-into-hanging-vases/, http://www.craftstylish.com/item/9581/how-to-make-fringe-flower-greeting-cards, http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=289329.0 and http://greenupgrader.com/2138/handspun-recycled-newspaper-yarn/.
Many posts are submitted each day at the Craftzine blog site. So we bookmark the directions right away for the ones we are interested in. Otherwise they are hard to go back and find a second time, especially if it has been a few days.
Another way to look up what we want on this blog is to go to the list of craft categories listed on the right side of the blog. Our favorite categories include: recycle, refashion and paper crafts just to name a few.
There is also an archive listed by the month. We clicked on Feb. 2008 to see what Valentines ideas were listed last year and came up with this one: http://www.dailycandy.com/kids/chicago/article/34902/Gleaming+the+Cube. The file containing the pattern for this idea is at: http://www.orangebeautiful.com/valentine.pdf. It is a printable pattern to make a decorated cube to hold little goodies.
And finally a recycling idea to make a coin purse out of an audio cassette from last February is here: http://www.chezlin.com/2008/04/cassette-tape-tutorial/#more-16.
Have fun browsing for new craft ideas. Share your favorites with us.