Rose Hip Heart Decorations

I don’t know about you, but I love decorating our house for the seasons, and even more so with natural materials gathered from woodland walks. So when I had some rose hips left over from our recent jelly making session, I decided to string some of them up in to pretty little hearts.

Keep in mind that the rose hips won’t stay fresh, they will start to wrinkle after a while but I still think it looks pretty with their little pops of red. If you hang them up somewhere that’s well aired and not too humid, they should dry out rather than go mouldy (and if you do end up with one going bad, just pick it off before it spreads to the others).

To make one of these decorations, you will need:

• a large handful of rose hips
• a pair of scissors
• some 1mm thick crafting wire
• wire cutters
• a long thick needle
• some ribbon

First of all, wash your rose hips and make sure they are well dried before you start crafting, as any moisture will encourage them going mouldy.

Snip off any stems that are still attached, but don’t cut the rose hips themselves.

I then laid out my rose hips first in the the shape I wanted to make (if you find a heart too tricky, you can go for a simple hoop instead), to determine how big I wanted to make it, how many rose hips I’d need, and also to make sure the rose hips were roughly the same size.

Word of warning, rose hips have a cluster of quite hard and chunky seeds inside them, which makes it difficult to push the wire right through the middle. Tip 1: use your needle to pierce through each rose hip first, that will make it easier to get the wire through. Tip 2: either thread the rose hips on to the wire end to end, as then the wire will go in between the seeds; or if you are lining them up like I have, then you want to push through them towards one end rather than the middle. You’ll see what I mean in the finished photo.

So, once you have laid everything out and have prepped your rose hips with the needle, you are ready to thread them on to the wire. This is a step that kids can help with too!

When you are happy with how many rose hips you have threaded, cut the wire, twist the ends tightly together, then snip off the ends.

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Then you can either leave it as a hoop, or bend the hoop in to a heart shape.

For your final step, tie some ribbon around the bit where the wire is twisted to cover up the join, and use the ribbon to hand up your heart or hoop!