Kids Crafts: A Few Valentine-themed Paper Crafts

Hearts! What's not to love about them? Especially when one is a seven year old brimming with ideas and itching to craft with the traditional heart shape, which just happens to be her favorite shape.

Inspiration comes from all sources - books, in particular. I think that's where the girl got her ideas for making the following couple of crafts: Goofy Heart Man and Twilled Hearts. She prefers to work independently these days, no assistance, suggestions, or ideas from me... unless it is a project I invite her to help me with.

Now, I do have books on Twilling and strips of colorful paper. But, she decided to get some color copy paper and tear them into strips and try her hand at the magnified version.

Another simple heart art with stamped blocks of color:
Items Used:
Square shaped dye inks in various colors.
Paper hearts cut out from any favorite paper - construction, card stock, copy paper

Use the dye inks to stamp block of color on the heart. Any size heart would be fine. We liked the smaller hearts.

And for a 2-in-one effect, place the small cut out heart on another paper while stamping. So, we placed the red construction paper hearts on a white card stock paper, then applied the stamps. Which gave us the pretty block-colored hearts and the white heart as below. These make really cute gift tags.

What to do with the small heart-shaped holes in the paper we cut out the little hearts from? Well, make them into unique cards.

Items Used: home marbled-paper or textured paper for the back, a series of small cut out hearts, card stock paper and other scrap colorful paper for layering.

With the 4 yo: For the last few weeks I couldn't throw away the Lettuce and Celery bottoms as the little guy's current fad is 'stamping' with them. The Romaine Lettuce bottom is the top favorite, with celery bottom coming in second.

I remember Ana's favorite at that age was Bok Choy bottom. She loved stamping with it, especially using neon pink paints.

Items Used: Acrylic paint, Bottom part of the greens, card stock paper, chalk pastels

Stamp the card stock paper with the flower pattern from the bottom portion of the greens. Make sure the cut surface is flat. Place the cut side on a towel and allow it to dry out a bit before use. [Inspiration from Martha Stewart]

Celery Roses we did turned out to be my favorite. It was a bit tricky to get a flat bottom but it worked out fine.

After stamping these dreamy designs and letting it dry, we used our favorite chalk pastels and colored the paper. Then cut out hearts. (If using chalk pastel and giving these away to others, I prefer to spray on a Matte Acrylic Sealant like Aleen's or Duncan's or FolkArt)

Valentine's Day itself is quite low-key in our house. But Arts and Crafts isn't.

So, any chance we get to create something, we seize it and do what we can. Many more ideas are floating around... but, it's mostly about letting the kids do what catches their fancy and have them enjoy the process and not worry about the end product.