Good Tuesday morning and welcome back!
As I am working on my Valentine’s Day blog post(s), I have been thinking of how to best organize all my projects… without cramming too many ideas into one post. Therefore, I have decided to split my Valentine’s Day activities into bite size sections.
Today, my blog post focuses on Valentine’s Day crafts for kids. Friday, my post will feature vintage-inspired Valentine’s Day crafts. After this, I will be featuring some special Valentine’s Day desserts. So be sure to stay tuned for all of those fun, future posts.
Like much of the United Sates, my family and I have been hunkering during the current cold snap. What better way to hunker down than with plenty of hot chocolate, peanut butter and jelly heart shaped sandwiches, and Valentine’s Day arts and crafts?
If this sounds like a fun winter day to you- then please join me and my Happy Hawks Homeschool crew as we make kid friendly- watercolor heart characters, a mini heart canvas, and some homemade stamp art.
To finish it all off, we will gather around the dining table to enjoy a homemade heart table runner and some delicious heart shaped sandwiches.
We would be thrilled to have you join in our Valentine’s Day fun.
~How to Make Heart Characters with Children~
My children love to paint using watercolors. We thought it would be fun to use some white copy paper, watercolor paints, and a heart cookie cutter to create some cool heart characters. This is such an easy project that a child of any age can participate.
- We started by painting the outline of our heart shapes… using a cookie cutter. Once we had our heart outline, we cut our hearts out. This is when the fun began.
- Each child painted their own design on their paper hearts.
- We let the hearts dry, and then I helped the children draw cute little faces for their heart friends.
- From there, we simply added googly eyes, bows, sequins, wooden hearts, you name it. Any simple items we had to enhance our cutie heart friends were added.
The children received a lot of joy making these little heart characters. Even I remember making similar crafts like this when I was in elementary school. These jolly characters are the perfect homemade Valentines to share with others.
~How to Make a Patterned Paper Heart~
In our homeschool lessons, we often use a printmaking technique to make rubbings of textured items. We specially use this art technique in the springtime, when we go outside and rub the base of trees and leaves to create unique patterns on paper.
Not being brave enough to venture into the cold, we looked around our house to locate some unique patterns. We landed on our kitchen cabinet pulls.
- We used copy paper to cut out a heart shape.
- We then placed the paper heart over the kitchen pull.
- Then we used a watercolor pencil to rub over the pretty pattern.
~How to Make Homemade Heart Stamps~
Using sponges as a stamp is another fun activity that my children and I have enjoyed in our homeschool lessons. I bought these little craft sponges at the Dollar Tree.
- I first drew a heart onto the sponge with a magic marker.
- Then, I used a pair of sharp scissors to cut out the heart shape I had drawn.
- After this, we used different colored paints to coat our homemade heart stamp.
- We pressed our stamps onto different mediums.
If you like perfect heart shapes, this may not be the technique for you. By nature, the sponge creates a certain holey, bubbly, rough texture. I think this adds interest and charm- but I also used a paintbrush, after stamping, to make some of the edges slightly more pronounced.
Perfection is not a requirement in our homeschool, but having fun while learning is.
~How to Make Heart Art on a Mini Canvas~
Several weeks ago, my husband picked out a horse-gem art- canvas for my daughter’s birthday. Are you familiar with these newish crafts? You may have seen these at Walmart or Hobby Lobby. Basically, you have to strategically add hundreds… or thousands… of tiny jewels to a sticky piece of art.
I think this type of activity is perfect for children around the ages of 9 plus years old. You see, this activity takes a lot of time and patience. But bit by bit, as the jewels are added, a picture emerges. An activity like this is not about immediate gratification. No, instead it teaches a child persistence- and that the reward is only fully appreciated at the end.
I wanted to “mimic” this idea in a Valentine’s Day craft for my children. This is something you may have me seen me do before. I call it point art. In short, we used paint and a wooden skewer to slowly add dots (of various sizes) to fill in a shape. In this instance- a heart shape.
- For this craft we started with a small canvas from the Dollar Tree.
- We then used a cookie cutter to trace our heart shape onto the canvas.
- From there, the heart was painted a solid, soft pink.
- Using monochromatic dots, we filled our hollow heart in. (Creating a similar gem art effect… only we had no jewels… just paint).
~How to Use a Scalloped Trim to Add Texture~
Perhaps you may recognize this wavy, pink trim from my last post- when I used it to make Valentines’ bunting flags. If not, you can see that post here.
We wanted to add the leftover scallop trim to create a frame of sorts. A bit of hot glue was all we needed to attach the trim to the top, bottom, and side edges. After this, I hot glued some tiny roses into each corner… and that was it.
Now we have a cute decoration- that used a scrap- that we otherwise would have had no use for. Waste not want not.
This is the type of Valentine’s Day decoration that my oldest daughter likes to have on her dresser top.
~How to Use Dollar Tree Items to Make a Valentine's Centerpiece- ~
As you may have gathered, from my previous post(s), I like creating sweet tablescapes using thrifted items. This time, I did not use thrifted items, but instead, items from the Dollar Tree.
A few weeks ago, as I was walking past the gift-wrapping area in the Dollar tree- I noticed this sweet floral gift bag. I thought this would be cute to create a Valentine’s table centerpiece with.
Simply put, I alternated cut out “gift bag hearts” with velvet, fabric hearts. This velvet fabric also came from the Dollar Tree. (In fact, I used this same fabric on another craft project… which I will be sharing on my blog post Friday. So be sure to stay tuned for that.)
- After creating a heart pattern with folded copy paper, I then used this simple pattern to cut out my decorative paper hearts.
- Following this, I used a long piece of ribbon -and some hot glue- to attach my decorative hearts.
- I then glued some thin, pink, ribbon bows in between each heart.
- Lastly, I added two wooden hearts to the ends- to add a bit of weight.
That was it for this casual, inexpensive table centerpiece.
~How to Make Easy Heart Shaped PB&J Sandwiches~
Nothing fancy here, but I can think of few things as comforting as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I suppose the nostalgia and childhood memories are what make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich so very delicious.
Adding a heart shape is not an original idea- but it is a fun, simple idea that older siblings can help with.
After a day of crafting, my little ones had worked up an appetite. Naturally, they smiled when they came in from the backyard to find these little cuties waiting for them.
Ahh, the simple joys of childhood. How honored I am to be a part of those memories.
To see my simple strawberry jam recipe, click here.
~Final Thoughts~
In conclusion to my Valentine’s Day crafts for kids post, I hope you all gained a few ideas and had a bit of fun hanging out with me and my family. Valentine’s Day crafts for kids do not have to be expensive. By using what you have, what you find in a thrift store, and even new items from the Dollar Tree- anyone can create beautiful decorations.
If you enjoy DIY crafts and activities, please let me know in the comments so I am sure to incorporate more crafting ideas into my future blog posts. Please subscribe to my blog and feel free to share this post with those who may appreciate a bit of Valentine’s joy.
P.S. If you are a fellow crafter, I would love to hear about some of your special Valentine’s Day crafty creations in the comments.
Also, follow my Cotswold Kitchen Mom Facebook and Pinterest pages to see more inspirations and ideas.
As always, thank you for tunning in… and please check back Friday, as I will be sharing some vintage- inspired Valentine’s Day ideas with you all.
Until then,
~Elizabeth!~
Lived the absolutely beautiful flowers!! Made with stamps?
Thank you! We made heart stamps with our sponges. I believe the flowers you are referring to is the watercolor style flowers on the Dollar Tree gift bag? I cannot claim the artistry on those, but I thought they were lovely as well. 🙂 We simply cut hearts out of the watercolor flower gift bag and used that as a part of our Valentine’s Day centerpiece. 🙂