Valentine Tag Tree and Felt Roses

After seeing so many cool Valentine's mantles and displays, I was inspired to do a little more to our fireplace.  As you can see, we have a bit of competition with ... the TV.

So, despite having a stone fireplace, we are limited in what can be placed on our mantle.  After all, this is our main "TV viewing" area.  

See my Valentine's burlap wreath?  I threw a burlap strip around one of my candlesticks... but that was it.  Only a hint of red.

So, I took that copper vase on the hearth and decided to dress up the grasses inside.  All of the faux grasses in the vase are from the Dollar Tree or from HomeGoods' clearance aisle.

Here's the vase.

Here are the supplies I scrounged up from our basement pile.

Needs:

Raffia straw 

Wooden tags

Chalks inkpad

Red chalk pen

Red satin ribbon (50 cents... ACMoore even had it on clearance two weeks before Valentine's Day)

Red sheer ribbon (ditto on the clearance, but this was only 25 cents!)

Steps:

1.  Rather than use paint, I took the chalk inkpad and gently rubbed it onto the wooden tags to give a slight color to them.  

Then pressed harder and scrape the edges to darken the edges of the tags.

2.  Then I used the Chalk Pen to write my favorite Valentine names on them.  I added a little raffia.

3.  I tied them onto the grasses 

Added a few little ribbon bows....

And Wah-lah!

Then, after seeing that I still needed a touch of red to the upper left portion of my hearth, I set out to find some red flowers to put into my plain white vase.

(BTW, this is my $3 find at the thrift store when I was staging my previous home.)

I searched and searched and couldn't find anything red in my house.  So, I set out to make my own.  I found these:

Needs:

Red felt (this is patterned felt)

small dowel rods

hot glue gun

Steps:

1.  First I stretched the one side of the felt a bit to sort of ruffle the edges.

2.  Then I used the glue gun to roll up the felt, and kept tucking in the bottom to make this:

I hot glued the fake rose to the dowel, and added a little raffia to make some bows.

3.  I figured the vase needed a little more, so I found this little chalkboard.

Added a little Chalk Pen, hot glued a loop of red satin ribbon, 

wrapped it around the vase, and got:

So, here's my Valentines fireplace.

Hope you enjoyed the photos.

Enjoy the big game Sunday night!  (Go Black and Gold!)

I linked up at this linky party at Thrifty Decor Chick.