If your kids want to celebrate Valentine’s Day, they don’t have to rely solely on passing out store-bought valentines to their classmates. Instead, let them create their own valentines to hand out. These fun Valentine’s Day crafts will mean more to the recipients and your kids will have fun along the way.
Hand-shaped Valentines
Let your child trace his or her hand on construction paper and then cut it out. Add special messages or small treats to the cut out. Easy, effective and cute!
Beaded Heart Ornament
Bend a piece of craft wire into a simple shape such as a heart. Thread beads onto the wire—to make a heart use red and white beads or red and clear beads. Twist the ends of the wire together. Twist the overhanging ends of the wire together to form a loop that you can use to hang the ornament.
Love Bug
Glue a Polystyrene ball to the bottom of a paper cup. Paint the cup red and the ball black and let dry. Meanwhile, create small black foam hearts using a heart punch. Glue these to the cup.
Fold a short length of pipe cleaner in half and glue it to the top of ball to make your bug’s antennae. Punch out three red foam hearts–one for each end of the antennae and one for the center of the ball to serve as a nose. Glue wiggle eyes on the black ball to finish your love bug.
Heart Magnet
Make a heart shape about 2 inches by 2 inches from red polymer clay. You can do this by hand or roll a ball of clay out and use a cookie cutter. Roll out another color of clay (say, red or pink) into a thin sausage. Break bits off and shape them into letters spelling a name, initials or a word such as “Love” or shapes (such as hearts) to use as decorations. Press these onto the heart. Bake according to the manufacturers instructions. When the ornament is cool, glue a magnet to the back.
Love Bracelets
Cut a rectangle of colored craft foam 1-inch wide and long enough to go around your wrist with an inch to spare. If you like, you can cut the edges of the strip into a pattern, for example, to make scalloped edges. Decorate with foam stickers such as letters, hearts or shapes or other embellishments such as beads or sequins. Use Velcro to make the bracelet stick together.
Lovebug Lollipop
First, create two large craft foam hearts and two smaller craft foam hearts. Stick two small craft foam hearts to the center of each large heart, then stick the two large hearts together so the points overlap.
Use a piece of double sided sticky tape to stick a lollipop in the center of the two large hearts. Cut a small piece of pipe cleaner, fold it in half and attach it to the top of the lollipop with a small piece of double sided tape. Stick a tiny heart or sequin to each end of the pipe cleaner.
Photo Credit: istockphoto.com
