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Welcome to January’s Pinterest Challenge hosted by our friend Cindy from County Road 407. This month we have been challenged to create a Valentine’s craft inspired by a Vintage Frame. Let’s get crafting!
If you are coming over from Diane‘s blog at South House Designs for the first time, welcome! Here at French Ethereal, I enjoy decorating in a French Country style with what feels ethereal to me.
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Our framed inspiration piece
Dorene from Dorenes Craft & Design Home Decor over on Facebook created this Elegant Farmhouse Valentines Frame. Using an antique picture frame, painted corrugated cardboard, pretty papers and bits and bobs of fabric, laces and jute twine, Dorene has created a beautiful wallhanging to inspire us in today’s Pinterest Challenge.
I liked both of my frames as they were, but I also thought about how a frame could become part of a whole centerpiece. So that’s what direction I am leading today with my framed Valentine’s idea. 🙂
It’s not often I get to decorate our kitchen counters as they are usually taken up with appliances and other stuff.
So… while Mr. Ethereal has just finished caulking around this area’s granite countertops, I thought it was a good time to do some Valentine’s decorating on those clean counters! 😉
I ended up choosing the gilded frame over the white one as it was the one with the most character for this project.
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Where to begin?
As we were putting away Christmas decor and taking down our Christmas tree, I asked Mr. Ethereal to bring down the Valentine’s and Spring Decor box from our garage. From it, I gathered all of the heart things I’ve created over the years, plus some other heart ornaments stored there, then some Valentines cards and two vintage frames I have in my stash.
The gold frame above was used in a previous Pinterest Challenge when we still lived in our trailer up in Sanger, Texas. You can see a little bit of our dining room window area and kitchen of our Heartland Charleston RV there in that post. (linked above)
I also used the Heartsy Garland created for another Pinterest Challenge back in 2020. It’s this ethereal woven heart with it’s dangling ribbons and dried rose buds that I wanted as my central heart of this framed project!
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Playing with the frame
I laid out several hearts and kept rearranging. I also played with several of the antique-style Valentine’s cards, too.
For more of a farmhouse feel, I gathered my box of laces, a roll of small jute twine we have, plus some really cute creamware farm animals.
In the inspiration photograph, the corrugated heart had a little jute and lace bow with a button centered on top. I wanted to recreate that in my piece. 🙂
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How to make a jute and lace bow
- Wind jute twine around your hand until desired amount of loops are created.
- Slip the jute off your hand, then tie and knot a small piece of twine around the middle. Fluff the loops on either side of the tie.
- Tie a piece of lace into a bow. Hot glue to the center tie on the twine.
- Hot glue a button on top to finish.
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Once this little jute and lace bow was hot glued to the fabric heart, it was time to assemble my centerpiece.
I started with a large tobacco basket to hold everything. To it was added a dark tan crocheted vest given to me by a friend for some texture.
The finished Valentine’s frame was added behind the tray and greenery was added to the front of the frame to mimic the greenery from our inspiration piece, along with several dried roses.
Two dollar tree heart decorations nestled in with a vintage decoupaged vase to the left side of the vignette.
A piece of wired burlap and lace ribbon was tucked in behind the hanging lock and key heart on the right side behind our French couple.
My thought is this vignette shares a whole love story in which our French suitor is professing his love to his sweetheart…
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And this is how I used my Valentine’s frame to create an elegant French farmhouse vignette.
Thank you for visiting today and I hope you will consider subscribing to my blog. I appreciate your comments, friends, on this Valentine vignette!
Up next is our host Cindy of County Road 407 who is sharing her beautiful Valentine frame. I know you will enjoy her post as everything Cindy creates is beautiful. All posts are linked below for you. 🙂
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Happy Valentine’s hopping,
