Hearty Valentine's crafts

Heart-shaped activities are something that my kids absolutely adore, and they start making them as soon as we undecorate the Christmas tree. In one of the previous posts you  have already seen some of our hearty crafts, and this year we have a few completely new ones:

1. Simple Valentine's garland

This cheerful heart-shaped garland was made ​​in the same way as the one with Easter eggs. We cut out the cardboard hearts, and glued colorful pieces of collage paper on them:

 When everything was dry, it looked like this:

In the end we hung the hearts on a decorative ribbon and had a colorful decoration for The Hearty  day, as my girls call the Valentine's day:

2. Pen decorations

In a post about pipe cleaners' crafts, you have already seen how easily they are shaped into a heart, so we put them on different pens as a decoration:

3. Heart-shaped wax crayons

I won't pretend this is my idea, since it's been spreading along Pinterest way back before I joined it.

We have collected the remains of wax crayons and sorted them in a silicone mold which we then heated in a microwave oven, at the strongest temperature for about 8 minutes.

It was quite hot when it was over, so we left it to cool before removing from the mold:

This is how they looked like on the bottom side:

The Older quickly noticed that the hearts lined up in this way really remind her of trefoil, which can be a great St. Patrick's Day craft:

4. Hearts with bottle caps and buttons

These hearts were made ​​in the same way as our bottle caps Christmas tree. We sorted them in a heart shape and then used a glue gun:

5. Heart shaped cookies

We also made some heart-shaped biscuits, but they quickly disappeared and we only have this picture from an early phase of their preparation:

If you need more inspiration, see our Valentine's board on our Pinterest profile.


I wish all of you to have a lot of hearty crafts and warms hugs in each of the next 365 days, not only on February the 14th ;)

 

Pipe cleaner crafts

This is a story of how smoking accessories came into our non-smoking home and became a very popular toy. Of course, I'm talking about pipe cleaners and this is how we played with them:

First we made some nice jewelry  - a bunch of colorful bracelets:

We also made a crown, but unfortunately didn't take photos of it. However, it will be a part of our homemade carnival costume, so we'll take some shots very soon.

We also made some Valentine's crafts: 

The Older remembered the paper chains we made as an activity from our advent calender, and wanted to do something similar with pipe cleaners:

And in the end she made "a pipe cleaners hill": 

Need some more ideas what to do with pipe cleaners? Check here. 

Seven days till Valentine's - seven hearty crafty ideas

Each child will be delighted with making heart crafts. We suggest seven ways that you can do it, with the materials you probably have at home, and some of them can be made by kids.

1. Cardboard necklaces

 

Kids will be occupied with this activity for some time. You just have to cut the cardboard rolls into smaller pieces, and let them to color the pieces and put them on a nice ribbon.

The one on the left picture were made by mum, and on the right by The Older. 

I found the idea for this craft here .

Need more ideas what to do with cardboard rolls? Look for them here !

2. A Garland

One of the easiest decorations we've ever done. We have these floor puzzles which have lost its purpose (in fact, I can not recall that they ever fulfilled their purpose, because babies just crawl away), but they have those super cute hearts which we pasted to some yarn and here it is, a simple and beautiful Valentines decoration.  The lattices used for hanging were the puzzles' framework.

3. Valentine's tic tac toe

 
This craft is definitely my favorite. It did not took as much time as I expected, and the children were thrilled with the result.

I cut felt into 12 pieces in the shape of a heart (6 red and 6 green).

One of my daughter's toys was used as a template for cutting hearts.

Do not throw away the scraps, since later they will be used for filling the hearts.

Sew or glue two hearts to each other, as I described in this post . When I was about halfway, I inserted the scraps in the middle and finished sewing. You should do it with all the hearts, to get 3 green and 3 red hearts.
Draw a large square on the cardboard and divide it into 9 smaller squares.

And that's it! You can immediately start playing the game that reminds us on our childhood.

I'd like to thank another blogger for this great idea . 

4. The Magic Wand

 

The whole process of making the Wand was described in this post , and it is very similar to the preparation of the above described felt hearts in the tic tac toe game. 

 

 

5. A Carnival Costume

This year, The Carnival (12.2.) and  The alentine's Day (14.2.) are very close dates, and in this way they can be celebrated at once. See here for a tutorial on how to make the wings. Decorate them with hearts and add aforementioned hearty magic wand. you can be a Love Fairy. 

   

6. Feeding the birds

Show some love to birds as well, in this crafty way.
See here for more information about bird feeding. 

7. A pendant

 

This pendant was made in the same way as described above with the magic wand or the hearty tic tac toe game. The only difference is in the material - we used cotton (from old shirts). You've probably already noticed that we are crazy about recycling. 

Looking for more activities for Valentine's Day? Look here .  

Happy Valentine's!