DIY Rustic Wood Hearts – A Pretty Happy Home

I’m titling this post “DIY Rustic Wood Hearts” because it’s really hard to DIY perfect wood hearts by hand.

At least it is for this girl!

Rustic sounds so much more purposeful than almost any other descriptive adjective I could use.

I was in the mood to create something as a subtle nod to Valentine’s Day without throwing up red and pink glittered hearts all over my house.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I don’t do cutesy decor very well. I love looking at those playful, festive decor pictures online, but that style doesn’t translate well in real life for me.

So how could I create something for Valentine’s Day that suits my style without spending a bunch of money?

Well…

What if I used our scrap wood and cut out a bunch of wood hearts, sanded them, stained them, and plopped them in a bowl? How festive would that be for the day of love?

So festive. But not too festive. Subtly festive. Because that’s my style, apparently. Hahahahahaha.

Here’s the tutorial for DIY Rustic Wood Hearts: (I’m a professional after all.)

Step 1: Sort through your scrap wood stash.

By stash I just mean a trash can of wood scraps. Some folks might call this kindling.

I call it projects in waiting.

I wanted my wood hearts to be 2 – 3 inches wide, so I looked for scrap wood pieces that would accommodate that dimension. The wood depth was something I didn’t have a ton of options to work with because most of our scrap wood was 3/4-inch thick.

You could also buy wood for this project if you are fresh out of wood scraps.

Step 2: Draw a heart template on the scrap wood.

Draw heart shapes with a pencil on your scrap wood. You can print out a template if you want your hearts to be exact.

I freehanded mine so each heart would be ~~rustic~~ a slightly different shape and size.

As you can see, I embraced the imperfections in the wood and kept all the nail holes and wood knots in my shapes.

Step 3: Cut those wood hearts out.

We used a jig saw to cut the wood hearts out. It worked okay. I’m sure there might be better options.

Since the scraps we used were small, we secured the wood in a vice to hold it steady and keep our fingers out of danger.

Step 4: Sand away to smooth out the edges.

This is the part in the process where we probably didn’t have the right tools for the job. We used all the sanders in our possession to not only round the edges of each heart, but to give them some additional dimension.

That’s when this sort of became an interpretive art project, which is fine because I was going for that organic heart look.

Have you ever cut someone’s hair and you cut one strand a little too short? To cover up that blunder you have to shorten another strand. But you stink at hair cutting so you messed up again and before you know it you’ve just shaved the person’s head.

Yeah. That was me with sanding these hearts.

You’ll do a better job than I did. I have no doubt!

Step 5: Stain and seal the wood hearts.

Once I ~~gave up~~ deemed the hearts to be perfectly rustic enough, I stained them using the different stain colors in my collection.

You could also paint them, toss glitter on them, do whatever you want to them.

I wanted the hearts to have just a bit of sheen, so I also sprayed them with a clear polyurethane.

Step 6: Enjoy the heck out of your DIY Rustic Wood Hearts.

You did good!

Now put those wood hearts in a bowl and call this project done!

I think I achieved subtly festive with these DIY Rustic Wood Hearts and that was my goal!

I don’t make things for the sake of the blog. I make items to actually use in my own home, preferably over and over. Sometimes these projects turn out how I imagined. Sometimes they take a different turn like this one did, but that’s okay. Part of the joy is in just getting your hands messy creating something.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

If you want to DIY Rustic Wood Hearts, but you don’t want to cut them out yourself, I have a solution for you!

You can buy a set of 10 hearts already beautifully shaped on Etsy for less than 5 bucks!