Make a Woven Danish Heart Pouch

Christmas in Denmark is symbolized with a heart. It's quite common to spend the Christmas season making woven hearts out of paper and hang them everywhere--on a Christmas tree, on garlands, on postal stamps. They're really sweet. Here in America we don't use the heart for Christmas, but as you know from all of my projects within the last week, Valentine's Day. SO, I morphed the Danish Christmas heart into something a bit different--a leather pouch. Because I love making things practical in addition to cute.
Materials: leather scraps (you can get some from Amazon), small Velcro circles, scissors, heart template (download here), pen
Step 1: Cut out the template and trace it onto your scrap of leather.Step 2: Cut out the leather.Step 3: Fold the leather strip in half and crease.Step 4: Weave together by starting with the first little strips on either color and placing it outside of the other.Step 5: Move onto the second strip and place it under.Step 6: Move to the last and bring it out again.Step 7: Now start with the next strip and repeat the process but do the opposite pattern of the first strip.Step 8: Repeat to the last strip and do the same pattern as the first strip.Step 9: Turn the finished heart into a pouch by placing the adhesive velcro circles onto the inside of the pouch on either side.
Donzo.I had made a few hearts and then realized that I could use them at a Valentine exchange that I attended over the weekend. I figured I needed to do something a little extra to them so I added in an arrow to complete the package.
I made the arrow out of a bamboo skewer and black paper (see more instructions here).photography by Trisha Zemp