Simple “Glowing” Valentine’s Day Card

Valentine’s Day is getting closer and if you still need a card for someone young (or young at heart), this card might be just the thing. It’s quick and easy to make and adds a little something fun to your card.

Here’s what you’ll need: a piece of cardstock, a small piece of red cardstock or construction paper, scissors, glue, pencil, heart template or cookie cutter (or cut your own), markers/crayons/colored pens or pencils and a glow stick. I found a pack of 6 glow sticks at the Dollar Tree for $1. Oh, and a couple pieces of scotch tape.

We’ll begin by folding the piece of cardstock in half to make a large sized card.

Decorate the front of the card for Valentine’s Day.

Next trace around the heart template or cookie cutter or draw your own heart on the red paper.

Cut out the heart shape with your scissors.

Open the card and glue the heart approximately in the middle of the right side section.

Next write the words, “You make my heart GLOW!” I used an orange marker for the word GLOW and added some yellow on the letters too. I also added some short lines all around the heart with the orange and yellow markers to make the heart look like it’s glowing.

Now for the fun part, tape at least 1 glow stick (not broken yet!) on the left inside section of the card.

And there you have it! The recipient can now bend the glow stick and make it glow! 🙂

Glow sticks make the card more interesting since there is something to DO after reading the card. It could also be fun if you bend the glow stick so it starts glowing, RIGHT before you give the person the card! Then the card itself will be glowing and they can still play with the glow stick. 😉 So make some of these Valentine’s Day cards for the special people in your life that make your heart glow! 😉

Simple Sewing on Paper Hearts

Hello and welcome to our next Valentine’s Day craft! Yes, we are going to sew on paper and make some super cute hearts that can hold some candy! 🙂

Here’s what you’ll need to get started: red or pink construction paper, scissors, a heart cookie cutter or template, pencil, some yarn, a yarn needle, a single paper punch, pen or marker and some stickers.

Begin by folding an end of the construction paper over so that you can fit your heart template or cookie cutter on it. This way you can cut 2 identical hearts with one time of cutting. Trace around the template or cookie cutter.

Cut out the 2 heart shapes while holding the folded paper together. Make sure you have 2 hearts held together for the next step.

Using the paper punch, punch holes along the outside edge of the hearts, but don’t make any holes along the top of the heart. We want this area to be open so we can put candy or other small items inside the heart. Before we begin sewing, write the name of the person you will give the heart to on the front or just decorate your heart. This is a good time to add the sticker too. (Though I forgot to add the sticker until after sewing, I was able to make it work then too.) 😉

Cut a piece of yarn and fold it in half. You will want to have enough yarn to sew all the way around the edge of the heart. Thread the yarn needle with your piece of yarn. Tie a knot at the end of the yarn.

Beginning at one of the holes at the top of the heart, we will sew around the bottom edge through each hole. But first let’s secure the yarn in the first hole. Starting from the back of the heart, put the needle through the hole and pull the yarn through until you are ALMOST to the knot coming to the hole. Then take your needle between the 2 pieces of yarn and pull it up snug. This will keep your yarn secure.

Try to keep the knot on the back side of the heart. Turn the heart over so the front side is on top again. Place the needle in the second hole and draw the yarn through. This will make a loop on the outside edge of your heart. Remember, start the needle through the hole from the back side of the heart.

Continue sewing on around the heart, bringing the needle and yarn through each hole. (Sorry I should have taken more pictures of this part.) When you have sewn through the last hole, turn the heart over again so the back side is facing up. Draw your needle under the back side of the last 2 loops of yarn.

Now draw the needle through just the second loop one more time to help secure the yarn.

Cut the yarn up close to the needle.

Tie a knot with the 2 strands of yarn and clip off the extra yarn with your scissors. And you are done sewing your heart!

Now your heart is ready for some candy or small items to stuff it. 🙂

Have fun sewing paper hearts and giving them to the special people in your life on Valentine’s Day! 🙂

It’s Time for Valentine Crafts!

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! 🙂

Another Valentine Card Kids Can Make

Are you still looking for Valentine cards that are simple enough for your kids to make? Here’s another suggestion for you! We’ll call this one the Soda Pop Valentine card. 😉 You’ll need a piece of paper, glue, a black marker, colored pencils or crayons, a pencil, scissors, a cut out paper heart and a straw.

I used half a sheet of pink construction paper for my card. I folded it in half to make a nice size for a card. On the front, using a pencil, draw a soda pop bottle.

With a thin line marker or black pen, trace over the bottle you just drew so that it stands out more plainly.

Color in the bottom 2/3 of the bottle whatever color you’d like your pop (soda) to be. I used brown for Root Beer. I wrote the words Root Beer on my bottle but you can write whatever kind of pop you like to drink and color it the same color as the drink you chose.

(Sorry I’m not sure why this picture looks purple!) Now imagine that the straw you have is inside this bottle of pop. (soda) Cut your straw to fit the bottle. Have the bottom of the straw just touching the top of the pop (soda) in your bottle. The top of the straw should stick out above the bottle opening.

Add a line of glue down the length of the straw and hold it in place on your card for just a little bit till the glue can start to set up.

If you have a permanent black marker, you can draw the rim of the bottle on your straw too so it looks more like it is inside the bottle.

Now with a pen or marker write the words, “I “soda” love you!” (I sorta love you!)

Next, you should write on the cut out heart these words…”I love you so much I think my heart might “pop”! 😉

Then glue the heart to the inside right hand side of your card.

If you like, you can add some little lines around the outside of the heart to help make the heart look like it’s ready to pop!

And there you are! All finished! Great job! Who will you share your Valentine card with? Remember to sign your name so the person will know you are the one that made this great card for them. 🙂

Valentine Tic Tac Toe

Are you looking for a super fast and easy game to play with your kiddos on Valentine’s Day? They don’t come any easier than Valentine Tic Tac Toe! Grab your Valentine’s Day candy and a piece of paper and a marker and let’s play!

Draw a tic tac toe board with 4 lines. You need two players for each game. Each player takes 5 pieces of the same color of candy. For example, 5 pink hearts for one player and 5 green hearts for the other. Taking turns, each player will lay 1 of their pieces of candy on a square on the game board. The winner is the first one to get 3 of their hearts in a row. In the following picture, the player with the green hearts won.

If nobody gets 3 in a row, its a tie game, as you can see in the following picture.

Since we can’t be with our grandkids this year, I’ve sent them a package of goodies for Valentine’s Day. This game is one of the things I included. Here’s enough colored hearts to play 3 separate games. 🙂

Can’t stand conversation hearts candy? (Me either!) You can play the same game using Valentine M&M candies! Yum! I guess they are called Cupid’s Mix M&M’s. (Chocolate! NOW we’re talking!)

Looks like white won!

And pink won this game! 😉

OR you can use the candy heart decorations made for topping treats!

It’s a tie! Play another round.

Red’s the winner this time!

No matter if you win or lose the game of Valentine Tic Tac Toe, everyone is a winner because after you are done playing…you can EAT the candy! (That’s the best part!) Have fun! 🙂

Stained “Glass” Valentine Heart

We’re back with another great Valentine’s Day craft project! If you saw yesterday’s post about a tissue paper heart activity and you saw that I suggested you save the stencil looking part of that project for another project, this is it!

If you didn’t see that post, what you need to do is cut a piece of construction paper in half. Then taking one of those pieces and fold it in half.

Draw half of a heart shape on the folded edge of your paper. Then cut along the line you drew. When you open it, you will have a heart. 🙂 For this project, we will be using the piece with the heart cut out, but you might want to save the heart to use it for something else.

For today’s project, you will need another half sheet of construction paper, a pencil, scissors, glue and several different colors of tissue paper. First cut a 1″ wide strip from each color of tissue paper. You will need only a short piece of each color. (I had a lot left over!)

Now, take the half piece of construction paper and fold it in half. Lay the first stencil on top and trace the half of a heart on the fold like you did for the first one.

Cut out the second heart so you have 2 matching pieces.

Unfold the 2 pieces. Place the side that you drew on facing up. This will become the backside of the stained “glass” heart. Using the strips of tissue paper, lay one across the heart opening and glue the ends down.

Take additional pieces of the tissue paper strips and place them, one at a time, in different directions over the heart opening…and glue the ends down.

Add a few more strips…

Keep adding strips until all the open spaces of the heart have been covered with tissue paper.

Take the other piece of construction paper you cut the heart out of and apply glue as it is shown in this picture.

Place it on the paper you have been gluing the strips to so that the edges meet and the 2 hearts match up. This will cover up all the ends that you glued down and allow the light to shine through the heart cutout. And there you have it! You’ve made a stained “glass” Valentine heart! Put it up to a window and look how pretty it is when the sun shines through the heart!

Doesn’t that look nice? Make as many as you like (Or as many as your parents will allow!) and put them close to your windows to make your house look festive. 🙂 You could also make a hole at the top and put a piece of string through so you can hang up your stained “glass” art. I hope you had fun today! Check back for more Valentine’s Day ideas soon!

Valentine Tissue Paper Heart

Are you ready for another fun Valentine’s Day project? Let’s make a really pretty 3-D heart!

You will need some construction paper, red tissue paper (or the color of your choice), scissors, glue, a piece of string and a pencil with an eraser.

You will need to cut approximately 75 little squares of the red tissue paper. I cut mine about 1 1/2″ square. They don’t need to be perfect because the paper will be “scrunched up”. Any smaller than that could be difficult to work with. If you have a cutting mat and a rotary cutter, this part will go much quicker, but scissors work fine. 🙂

Take HALF of a sheet of construction paper and fold it in half.

Drawing on the folded edge, draw half of a heart shape.

Sorry, that’s rather hard to see. Cut out the half -heart shape and you will have a whole heart when you unfold it.

Set aside but save the piece that looks like a heart stencil for a project we will do another day. 🙂

Your finished heart can be added to a card, have a magnet attached to the back or be made to hang up like an ornament. If you would like your heart to hang as an ornament, now is the time to add a hole at the top. Go ahead and put your string through the hole because it will be harder to do later. (I found that out the hard way!)

You are now ready to start using the tissue paper squares. Take 1 square and your pencil with an eraser.

Place the pencil eraser in the middle of the square of tissue paper.

Wrap the tissue paper down around the pencil end.

Apply a very small amount of glue to the tissue paper at the end of the pencil eraser.

While holding the tissue paper onto the pencil end, place the tissue paper onto the heart you cut out. Start out close to the outside edge of the heart.

Hold in place for a few seconds, then carefully pull the pencil out leaving the tissue paper on the heart. Continue adding more pieces of tissue paper in the same way.

Keep adding…you’ve got the hang of it now!

The closer together you put the tissue paper pieces, the fuller your heart will look. Try to get the pieces right up against each other where they attach to the heart. If you like, you can just make an outline of the heart with the tissue paper.

I like it better when the entire heart is filled up. It will take a little more time but it will be worth the effort.

You did it! Isn’t that a pretty ornament to decorate your house for Valentine’s Day? I think it would be really pretty to use more than one color of tissue paper. If you used red, white and pink, wouldn’t that look nice? I hope you’ve enjoyed this Valentine activity! I’d love to see your hearts, if you care to share them!

It’s February! That means Valentine’s Day!

We made it through January 2021! Whoohoo! Welcome to February! What is the most fun thing that happens in February? I think it’s Valentine’s Day! I hope we can share lots of ideas of fun things to do that center around Valentine’s Day. Today’s fun is an activity making a Valentine’s Day card involving pears! Pears? Yep, pears! 🙂 You’ll need 1 piece of white paper, (printer paper is fine) 1 piece of yellow paper or a yellow crayon or marker, glue, some markers or crayons and a pencil.

Let’s start by folding the white paper in half.

Then in half again the other direction.

This is your card base.

Using your yellow paper, lightly draw 2 small pear shapes and 1 larger pear shape. The larger pear shape needs to fit on the front of your card.

Cut out your pear shapes and get ready to put your card together. 🙂

Glue the large pear onto the front of your card. You can draw a face, arms and hands, legs and feet or anything else you want to do to make your “pear” person. Here is how I did mine.

Now add the words “You are “pear”-fect!” 🙂

Now open your card and glue the 2 smaller pears onto the right hand page. You can give them arms and legs and a face and whatever else you would like to add. Then write the words, “We make a great “pear”.

Decorate the rest of your Valentine’s card and save it to give to that special someone on Valentine’s Day! Hope you had fun making this “pear”-fect card! 😉

Valentine’s Day Craft

Happy Valentine’s Day!! 🙂 Today I want to share a cute little craft kit that I found at Walmart that is a perfect project for Valentine’s Day. It’s Crayola’s String of Hearts kit using their Model Magic. It cost around $5.00.

Here’s what you’ll find inside the box: 1 pouch of red model magic, 1 pouch of white model magic, directions, 1 marker, 1 tube of glitter glue, 1 string, 1 tool for poking holes and 1 heart shaped cutter.

Remove 1 chunk of model magic from the pouch and roll it out to about 1/8″ thick. You can use a rolling pin, the side of a glass or just your hands. Use the heart shaped cutter to cut out as many hearts as you can. I found through trial and error that it’s best to leave a little bit of room between the hearts. It makes it easier when trying to pick them up. (I cut the red batch a little too close together and they tended to stick back together when I tried to lift them.)

I found it helpful to use a small spatula to slide under the hearts to help release them from my cutting board.

Using the little tool for poking holes, poke 2 holes in each heart. Don’t be afraid to make them too big as they seem to close up some as the hearts dry. The holes are where the string will go through them.

You can also make tiny marks on the edge of a heart using the tip of the heart shaped cutter.

As you cut out the hearts, you will have leftover scraps. Save them for now. Flatten and cut hearts out of the other color of model magic. Again, save your scraps.

You can use your leftover scraps to simply squish them back together and re-roll them to cut more hearts out. But if you take a bit of each color and squish them together just a little, you can cut out hearts that look like this:

I just LOVE these! If you mix some red and white together, but squish them together for a longer amount of time, you can make pink hearts. 🙂

If you use a little less red and a little more white, the pink will come out an even lighter color. Now you need to allow your hearts to sit out over night to dry. I kinda helped mine along a bit by heating my oven to its lowest setting, turning the oven off and letting the tray of hearts sit in the oven for an hour. Some of my hearts might have been rolled out a bit too thin, but I made 55 hearts with this kit!

After your hearts have dried, you can use the included marker and tube of glitter glue for decorating your hearts. Allow the glitter glue time to dry before proceeding.

Now you can string some of your hearts together to make a decoration to hang up. Put the string into the right hole from the right side, cross over the back of the heart and bring the string up through the heart going back to front. Continue in the same way to string as many hearts together as you would like. If your holes seem to be too small, gently use the poking tool to open them up more.

Here’s a closer view so you can see how to string the hearts together.

Do you have leftover hearts? You can glue them onto paper to make a picture or even a card for Valentine’s Day.

Hope your Valentine’s Day is special! Thanks for reading my blog! 🙂

Valentine Jello Jigglers

Are you looking for a fun treat for the kids for Valentine’s Day? Remember Jello Jigglers? Wow, I haven’t thought of them in ages! Kids love them! To make them special for Valentine’s Day, use heart shaped cookie cutters to cut them out. 🙂 It all starts with Jello…preferably a red flavor for Valentine’s Day.

The recipe is on the Jello boxes. You only need Jello and water to make them. The recipe on the box calls for 4 small boxes of Jello to make a 9 x 13″ pan, but I made half that amount and used an 8 x 8″ pan.

Bring the water to a boil and stir it into the Jello.

Pour the Jello into the pan and put it in the refrigerator for 3 hours to set up.

After the Jello has set up firmly, take it out of the refrigerator and gather your heart shaped cookie cutters.

Press your cookie cutters down into the Jello. A word of caution…I found it more difficult to remove the larger hearts so you might want to stick to using smaller sized cookie cutters. Also dip the bottom of the pan into hot water for a bit to help the bottom of the Jiggler to come free. Remove the Jigglers carefully, using a small spatula to help get them loose. Arrange on a dish.

For an added flair, you can top them with whip cream or pink colored yogurt.

I don’t recommend feeding these to children that don’t have a mouth full of teeth yet. They take a bit of chewing! 😉 Hug your Valentines close and enjoy your treat together! 🙂