Engagement Party Decorations - Tutorial!

My best friend recently got engaged and you wouldn't believe how happy this made me! I can't think of anything better to look forward to! Her and her fiance make the perfect couple and I am so pleased for the both of them that they found each other!

This Saturday was their engagement party and the beautiful bride-to-be asked me and a fellow bridesmaid to help her with decorations, obviously we were more than happy to lend a hand. We made bunting and jam jar tea light holders and paper flowers. I made some paper mache hearts that were a suprise and I wanted to share with you how I made them ...


I cheated and bought Play-doh but you could so easily make some. I moulded the Play-doh into heart shapes like this ...

I made mine quite big, about 10cm but you could make whatever size you liked.

I then made a water and PVA mixture and tore layers of newspaper ready to coat in the mixture.

I moulded the wet strips of newspaper around the heart shaped Play-doh. You have to get your hands dirty with this bit! To get the strips to really stick to the heart shape you need to smooth them down with your fingers.
I did sides at a time. Once I had done one layer on all of the hearts I then painted a layer of just PVA glue on them and then PVA glued another layer of newspaper to them. They then looked like this ...

I waited a day for the glue to completely dry and then used a craft knife to cut down the heart in half. I then scooped out the Play-doh from inside the hearts and glued the halves back together with another layer of newspaper and PVA glue ...

Once the glue had dried I painted the hearts in acrylic paint, some pink, some red and I left some just as newspaper. I then drew the happy couples initials on the hearts in black marker pen.

And here we have the finished hearts ...