Mad Hatter Tea Party: Queen of Hearts Guardsmen

The Queen of Hearts Guardsmen are another must have character prop for any Alice in Wonderland themed party. I made this little army using foam core boards that I found at the local dollar store. You can also find foam core boards online. I preferred the foam core over regular poster board because of the added sturdiness.I originally planned to attach the guards to wooden stakes to sink into the grass. In my mind, this was going to be an outdoor party, but the weather slapped me into reality. I had to modify a few things to bring the party indoors. I improvised/compromised by bringing the guards inside and taping them to the wall along the dining room. I did leave one lonely guard right by the door to greet guests.Aside from the board, I also used prepackaged heart shaped card stock (also from the dollar store) and whatever glue I had on hand. I think I switched glues a few times. I started off with the fancy scrap booking glue, but I found it was too runny. So, I moved on to Aileen's tacky glue, and that worked fine - a little thick but it did the trick. Spray glue was also pretty easy to use for this. In all honesty, it's paper to paper, so it shouldn't be that serious. I may have gotten a little obsessive with the glue experimentation.If you can't find pre-cut heart shapes, you can always use a fancy craft cutter or you can cut them by hand. I totally lucked out, having found these in February around Valentine's.I wish I had taken more pics of the process, but as you can see from the pics I do have, it's pretty easy once you have the hearts. I basically used three sizes of hearts. The larger hearts were perfect for the face and feet. I also trimmed two pieces of the large heart for the shoulders.I used a medium white heart (my pack had white backing, so that was perfect!) for the second layer of the face. I hand trimmed a smaller heart for the nose and an even smaller heart for the mouth. I colored the mouth in with a black Sharpie oil paint pen/marker. I could have used black card stock, but I had the pen handy from another project and I was probably delirious by then (since I love to create in the wee hours of the night).I trimmed down the medium hearts for the corners of the card, and I used the smaller hearts for the center. I sketched out the numbers and letters by hand on the backside of the red and hand cut from there. The last step was to glue everything together and the guards were complete! In all, I spent about $8 to make all 4 (and that includes the cost of the fancy paint pen). Everyone loved them and I really do love how clean and polished they came out.