New Release! Easter Banner for Older Children

Due to busy life seasons, this is a few years past due! I am finally releasing an “expansion packet” for your Easter Banner. If you already own an Easter Banner, please hop over to my Etsy shop to pre-order a new devotional with additional symbols to use with your growing children. The new theme is centered around “Jesus is King.” Please reach out with questions. Blessings. 

Easter Season at HFT!

During the silence since Easter we have enjoyed our wonderful Missouri winter [read 70 degrees one afternoon and a snowstorm the next!], busy days coupled with homeschooling and attending our university model school set up, and new extracurricular activities for my children. The increased demands at home and with my children’s schooling have reduced my productivity level of items for my shop–I’ve just been too busy helping my daughter hand-sewn felt sharks and kitty cats. For those of you who have continued to follow Heart FELT Truths through the seasons, please note that this year through Easter and Christmas I am only maintaining items in my Etsy Shop that are ready to ship. Once I sell out of something, I am out! I have remaining inventory from Christmas, and a few Easter items, and am attempting to get some more Easter Banners completed. That means that this year’s sells for Easter and Advent are on a first-come-first-serve basis. I hope that many of you will still take advantage and enjoy celebrating Easter with your children in this special way! Here is the timeline for this year’s Easter Season:

Easter Sunday:  April 5

Palm Sunday: March 29    ***Palm Sunday is the day you begin using the Easter Banner.

Order by Date for guaranteed delivery by Palm Sunday: March 25th

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My Pieces Aren’t Sticking!

A good friend of mine has used a Heart FELT Truths Advent Calendar in her classroom at school the past few years. This year I made her a new pocketed backdrop and she began using it in class this month. She asked me today, “Why aren’t the pieces sticking?” This is a great question, and may be some of you are having trouble at home with this. Here are some solutions:

  1. Location: Do you have your banner hanging where people are constantly walking by or an air vent is blowing on it?
  2. Smoothness: Is your banner hanging flat against a surface? You don’t want the banner to be curving or bent. Consider adding a 3M adhesive to the bottom to make it lie flat against whatever surface you have it on.
  3. Fuzziness: This is probably the most important. Felt clings to felt because of its fibrous nature. I handle tons of felt and every color and ever ream of every color has a different feel. Some felt comes off the bolt fuzzy and soft, while the next one is plasticy and hard. You can increase the fuzziness of your backdrop by loosening the fibers. Use a comb, baby comb, scratch pad, or your finger nails and gently rub the felt to loosen the fibers up. This will make it “stickier.”

I hope if you are having problems that this helps!

Pulling out your Advent Calendar-Away with the Wrinkles

A customer asked me today about ironing her Advent Calendar. Here is my response:

I use my iron close to the wool setting…just hot enough to use some steam as the wrinkles come out much better with steam. I would be careful as you iron the part where the sky is glued on (for those of you with the “starry sky banners). I have ironed mine before, but I greatly reduce the steam so it doesn’t interfere with the glue. If the wrinkles aren’t coming out then crank up the temperature a bit on your iron. I always start low though because if you get the iron too hot it has a melting type effect on the felt that will scorch it and cause it to loose some of its “fuzzy” feeling and the pieces won’t cling. I hope that makes sense!

If you have your iron hot enough and are using steam, the felt should smooth out easily and look fresh and pressed!

Final Sale!!

Because you need to have your Advent Calendar ready to go by December 1, a Black Friday or Cyber Monday Sale doesn’t do our customers any good here at Heart FELT Truths. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we are offering a special sale and orders placed during this time will ship by Friday morning to arrive in time for your Advent kick off on December 1st!. ** Below are our coupon codes for the sale:

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15% off any purchase of $15.00 or more (get 15% off on DIY Kits and completed Advent Calendars)
Coupon Code:  15off15
Expires Wednesday at Midnight (CST) November 26th

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$20.00 off on our Heart FELT Truths Deluxe pocketed Advent Calendar
Coupon Code: 20offDeluxe
Expires Wednesday at Midnight (CST) November 26th

Use these coupon codes in our Etsy Shop. Enjoy!

**This does not apply to International Orders. The USPS does not guarantee shipping times. Our orders ship Priority Mail which arrives within 2 days 99% of the time so your orders should show up by the end of the day on December 1st.

Christmas 2014 Kickoff: New Product and Early Bird Pre-Sale Discount

It’s hard for me to believe that we are approaching our fourth Christmas season selling Advent Calendars as Heart FELT Truths. When I started this business about three years ago it was just trial run. I spent about $50 in supplies and made two calendars to start my Etsy Shop. Thank you for being a part of this journey of God blessing our home financially through a successful small business, and allowing us to bless your home with meaningful traditions! If you aren’t familiar with this unique Advent Calendar and how it can make Christmas meaningful and Christ-centered in your home, read more about it here.

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Each year we have released a new product to our Christmas line up. This year we are adding to our Deluxe Pocketed Advent Calendar by including a navy pocketed calendar to the line up. Navy was by far themost ordered backdrop color for our regular and DIY advent calendar kits. I will be running a pre-sale on all pocketed calendars (both tan and navy). This season they will be selling for $119.00. Our presale running from today through October 14 is for $100.00 even and free shipping on any order over $50!! We hope you will share about this with your friends and take advantage as this Christmas season I have a limited number of calendars I will be able to sale due to time constraints with my growing family. Thanks again, and God bless!

Pocketed Advent Calendar ($19.00 discount) enter code CHRISTMAS2014

Free Shipping on Purchases of $50 or more enter code FREESHIPOCT

**Consider planning your girls’ craft night now and order our four person DIY Craft Night set. Use the coupon code above for free shipping!

Head on over to our Etsy Shop

Easter Banner Shipping Deadline 2014

Well, as much as I would love to be writing posts on preparing and interacting with your children about Easter, I am too busy trying to finish up my last batch of banners in time for shipment! For those of you who are new to the Heart FELT Truth’s Easter Banner, the banner begins on Palm Sunday and has daily devotions and Scripture reading. Each day a new piece (or two) is added to the banner as you count down to Easter Sunday. Nails are placed in the cross on Good Friday, and then the black portion of the banner is draped across. On Resurrection Sunday your children will wake up to an empty tomb and the bright words “He is Risen!” displayed on the banner. Just as a heads up, the deadline for arrival by Palm Sunday is coming up soon! For US Shipments, please place your order by April 8th. That’s a week away! I still have complete Easter Banners and DIY kits ready to ship.  And… if you order by April 6th, you can use the coupon code over at Proverbial Homemakers (she has some other great Easter resources listed there as well).

2013 Christmas Season Shipping Update

Just an up date that their are limited quantities of all items in our shop READY TO SHIP! If you are wanting to place an order, your order can be shipped within 24 hours and typically arrives in 2-3 business days (for US orders) via USPS Priority Mail. The only thing listed in our shop that is not currently RTS is our Deluxe Calendar but I can have it ready for shipment within 2-3 days. Thank you!

I am still hoping to get information up on the blog soon about memorizing Luke 2:1-20 with your felt set.

Son placing pieces on Advent Calendar

Son placing pieces on Advent Calendar

Don’t Miss Thanksgiving

Honestly, it makes me sad when I run into the craft store to pick up supplies for Advent Calendars and all the Christmas decor is out. Last night as I was checking out the cashiers were already donning reindeer antlers and Santa Hats! Even though I am busy promoting and creating a “Christmas product” all through the months of October and November (out of necessity because you need to have it by December 1st and I can’t make all of them the day after Thanksgiving), I LOVE Thanksgiving. I cherish Thanksgiving, and I hate it when we miss out on the blessing of gratitude. Giving thanks to God dissolves so many of the ugly things in our hearts: selfishness, lack of giving, discontentment, greed, covetousness, frustration. All these things can be fought with an “attitude of gratitude” as the saying says.

So, I just wanted to take a moment to remind you that Thanksgiving is only a week away. Don’t forget to stop and enjoy reflecting on all the things God has given you and worshiping Him for His great grace and kindness!

Here’s a recap of our family’s Thanksgiving tradition that I shared about last year. You can make it out of stuff from home or the craft store for $0-$10.00. I promise it will become priceless as the years go by!

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I still remember that first Thanksgiving we spent together….it was our first major holiday since our wedding in May. I wanted it to be special, with something unique we could do year after year. And I wanted it to set our eyes on the Savior.

So here is our simple Thanksgiving Box. I usually call it our “Blessing Box.”  If you are a newlywed looking for a special tradition to start your marriage off, I think you’ll find this especially fitting for you! But I also think that it is easily adaptable for singles, and for families with older children. All you need is an archival photo box (at your craft store for $1.99-$3.99) a sheet of letter stickers (or great handwriting and a marker or paints), and a few pages of printer paper or stationary. Let’s just say you can pull this one off for well under $10.00.

Here’s our box:

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And here’s what we do: Every Thanksgiving (often a few days after the business of family visits is over) my husband and I sit down together with a sheet from the box and write down what we would like to thank God for from the entire past year. When we are finished, we close our letters and DO NOT READ THEM TO EACH OTHER. Then we pull out the letters from all of the past years and read them together and reflect on all of the amazing and gracious things the Lord has done for us. We each especially look forward to hearing what the other person chose to right about from last Thanksgiving since we do not share it with each other at that time. It is a very special and intimate time. We hope to introduce our children gradually into this tradition as each one of them becomes old enough to write and express his or her own thoughts on paper. But for now, we cherish these moments together as a couple. As we accumulate more notes through the years, I am sure we will have to spread out the reading over several days. I think that sounds like a wonderful opportunity leading up to Thanksgiving Day!

$20.00 Gift Card Giveaway

Stop by Dawn’s fun blog called “Our Little Monkeys” today and read my recent guest post on using felt for your preschool activities! This week at Our Little Monkeys I am also sponsoring a giveaway for a $20.00 gift certificate to my Etsy Shop. You can enter that giveaway (it ends this Thursday!) here. My hope is to get you all on the early bird boat to Christmas preparations so that you can save some money by either using our free patterns or purchasing our DIY kits. I know that if you wait too much longer, you will find yourself too busy to get it done!

 

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