Red Wooden Heart - Making The Templates

So to make the wooden heart, the first step was to cut out lots of concentric heart shapes from 12mm plywood.  I used exterior ply as that's what my local hardware shop had, but almost any ply would do as long as it's flat (so don't use shuttering/elliotis ply which is often warped).

Below is an image with the outline of all the hearts in different colours.  Just download it (using the arrow button on the bottom of the window) and resize it to your requirements by opening it in Illustrator or Inkscape (a free program you can get here: http://inkscape.org/download/?lang=en )  Each individual heart layer should remain editable in these 2 programs by just ungrouping the image - not that you'd probably need to do that, you can resize the whole thing all together by just pulling the corner arrows.

Or alternatively, just print it out and use a photocopier to enlarge it and copy it, cutting out the size of heart you want for each layer.

My red wooden heart is approx 25.5cm (10in) in width and height.

If anyone has problems with this I can email you all the individual layers separately if necessary, just leave a comment..

So when you've got your individual heart layers the correct size and cut out, stick them onto your plywood with glue so they won't move. I usually use display mount, but pritt would work or a similar paper glue. You want it to be stuck on mainly round the edge you're cutting out - so it's not necessary to put glue in the middle of the image.

Cutting out the wood and making the french polish will be covered in the next post..