Yep, it’s February and that means Valentine’s Day will be here before we know it! Today’s post is about something fun to make that doesn’t involve sugar! 😉 Valentine pencils! You can make these to give to the kiddos or let the kiddos make them for someone else. It would be a fun way for the kids to make Valentines for their classmates for a Valentine’s Day party at school.
You will need a piece of red or pink construction paper, scissors, glue, markers, some new pencils and the same number of pipe cleaners (chenille stems) as there are pencils. You can either draw some hearts or use a small heart shaped cookie cutter to trace around.
Begin by making a fold in your construction paper, so you can cut 2 layers of a full-sized heart at the same time. Notice that the cookie cutter edge is lined up with the fold. Trace around the cookie cutter. Or if you are drawing it free hand, that’s fine.
Holding the 2 layers of paper together, cut on the line you drew. You should end up with 2 hearts connected by 1 side.
Make a cut on the crease about 1/3 of the way up from the point of the hearts.
Close the heart and decorate both sides. I drew a face on one side and wrote some words on the other side. Your designs can be as simple or as fancy as you like.
Apply glue to the inside of the heart in the following manner: a line of glue up the middle of both sides and then all over just one side of the heart.
Place one end of a pipe cleaner on one side of the heart in the center.
Close the heart over the pipe cleaner and hold it closed until the glue holds it together.
That’s the front side and this is the back side.
If you have wiggly eyes, I think they make these even cuter. 🙂 Just glue them in place.
Allow the glue to dry a little before continuing with the next step. Here is the front side of some Valentine pencils I made.
And the back side.
Now for the finishing touch that turns plain ordinary pencils into Valentine pencils! Line one of the pipe cleaners up with a pencil, allowing the heart to stick up above the pencil eraser a little bit.
While holding on to the top part, wrap the rest of the pipe cleaner around and around the pencil until it’s completely wrapped and you run out of pipe cleaner.
Aren’t they fun? 🙂 The more, the merrier!
These are fun to make and you can put a sweet message on them too.
Hope this finds you all doing well and staying safe! We are in the middle of the Winter Storm Landon, but we are doing ok so far! They are warning us that we might lose our electricity, so if that happens I won’t be able to post tomorrow. Stay warm! 🙂
The Kids Niche 