Dual- Use Valentine Decor

I'm a little proud of today's project. The main reason is because I was so tempted to just go out and find a fun new project to do. But I reined myself in and decided to go through a box of old craft items from when I had a craft booth at the former ZCMI mall.  That was about 16 years ago!  I was happy to see that I had some good possibilities in those boxes. Well, I was happy AFTER being mortified at just how much I still have from clear back then. You'll never believe what I found---a whole shoe box of wooden doodads including wood hearts! I can't believe I had a bunch of wood hearts, already cut out.  Perfect! I sorted the wood stuff... I think I will have to get rid of some of it--- I have no idea what to do with the wooden animal Noah's Ark buttons!  :)  What was I thinking??? 

I found some wooden balls in the box that had a flat side on them, and finished cutting out one of the small fancy wood boards I started to cut out about a month ago (I used wood I had sitting around for that, too). 

Then I painted the wood balls and the board a dark chocolate brown, with a buttermilk white (off white) over top, then sanded to give it that shabby chic look.  I glued (using E-6000) the wood feet (the wooden balls with a flat side) onto the bottom of the board.  You can barely see them peeking out at the bottom of this picture. 

 I painted the wooden hearts [OK, so first I found more old wood (yes, from the old craft box) and cut out even more of the hearts] white, red, and pink.  And then cut and applied vinyl sayings for the "candy" conversation hearts. 

I like seeing them in the apothecary jars.  Cute like the candy, but something that my kiddos won't eat in a couple of days! 

You might be wondering why I bothered with the little footed board?  Well, I was thinking of how much my little girl loves to play Tic-Tac-Toe, and thought that the hearts would be a fun way to play.  So, some of the hearts have a back with an X or an O, although it could just be played with two colors, one for X and one for O. 

Now that I look at it, I like it even just left out that way- a cute decoration in and of itself!

I hope you like it!  I usually copy something because there are so many cute ideas out there.  But I'm proud to have come up with this one on my own.  That really is so rare for me!  I hope you like it.  And the best part...........I used supplies I already had, and even better that it used up things from so long ago!  Wahoo!