Do It Yourself: Valentine's Day Gift Wrap

While my last year's Valentine's Day gift wrapping was simple and elegant, I wanted to do something completely different this time. I decided to go back to the good-old brown bag and embroider it with red yarn.

First step was to draw an outline of a heart and break it in even increments, marking each one for a new stitch. As this was my second take, I made sure the marks are farther apart from each other: paper is easy to tear when stitches are too close.

Then I punctured paper at each mark with my crochet hook (you can use another sharp object, just make sure it is thicker than a regular needle).

One-by-one - I stitched each line making sure they they are parallel to each other.

Then I went back in the opposite direction, creating perpendicular yarn lines.

I love how much texture it created. Just like my last year's idea, it turned out to be warm and fuzzy. Most importantly, this year it has more of a hand-made quality to it.