Colorful Valentine’s Day Mantel

Valentine’s Day is one of those overlooked holidays for decorating. It does not get a lot of love (pun intended) in that area. Even I am guilty of it, last year’s pretty in pink and gray mantel was the first time I had decorated for this holiday. This year I had a lot of fun decorating a colorful Valentine’s Day mantel. I love using color in my decorating and wanted to do something different from the normal red and pink.

This yarn heart banner was the kickoff for the rest of the mantel. I shared the tutorial for it last week along with where I got the inspiration from. It was a fun and easy craft that was totally free for me to make! Score! I really love how the colors pop against the white mantel.

Sticking with the yarn theme, I decided to make some cute pom pom flowers to sit on top of the mantel. I gathered some jars from around the house along with some I bought at Hobby Lobby. Luckily I already had some branches that I had previously collected from the yard for a different project. I would not want to be out there collecting branches now. Brrrrrrr!!

The jars were looking a little plain so I thought it would be fun to make up some vintage looking labels to go on them. Since there was a big love sign on the mantel, I made up some labels with the word LOVE in different languages to complement it. I kinda have a thing for foreign languages, I love seeing words written in them and hearing them spoken. I have been learning Spanish and hope to someday know several other languages as well. Here is the tutorial for the pom pom flowers with the free printable labels. 🙂 The flowers were very simple and quick to make.  Aren’t they darling?

Since there is so much color going on in the garland and pom pom flowers, I wanted to keep the rest of the mantel light neutral colors. The backdrop is just made of pallet boards. It has been a staple in some of my decorating. I found the love sign at Hobby Lobby.

It was initially all black but that did not fit in well with the light neutral colors. Even though it did work with the frames of the silhouettes that flank the mantel. Originally, I planned to paint the whole sign white, but Mr. Wonderful came up with the brilliant idea to paint only the front white. He painted it real quick with an acrylic paint and I immediately loved it! The black on the edges almost looked like a drop shadow on the word and it tied in perfectly with the frames. That is why I keep him around! Well that and a couple other reasons… 😉  I gave it a light sanding to distress it a bit.

My dahlia book page wreath fit in perfectly with the neutral colors I was going for. I absolutely adore this wreath! The tutorial was one of the first blog posts that I ever did and remains one of the most popular. You can also see the wreath in use on my late summer mantel.  It is so versatile that I know I will use it again in the future as well!

This biggest problem is storing it without bending the pages!  There were a couple bent edges when I took it out of the bag it was being stored in, but overall it fared pretty well.

These pillows are a couple other projects I have been working on lately. I made the scrappy heart pillow to tie into the colors on the mantel. I like how it turned out. The ‘follow your heart’ pillow is a knockoff of a popular seller on Etsy. I LOVE the pillows she makes so I decided so make some of my own. If you like them too you can check my DIY farmhouse grain sack pillows tutorial.

My goal was to keep this mantel more simple and let the colors steal the show. I think that was achieved. 🙂 Although my third son told me it was too plain, he likes it better when the mantel is more full of stuff. Ha! Future interior decorator there maybe? I reminded him (and myself) that sometimes simple is better. I guess he doesn’t get it from a stranger, huh?

What do you think of the colors? Does the mantel still give off a Valentine’s Day feeling?

I hope so anyway. Actually, I think I like this one better than last year’s mantel. I better start putting on my thinking cap for next year! The pressure is on! 😉

Have a wonderful day!