melting crayons for valentine’s art If you’ve never seen our technique for creating art with melted crayons, I’d love for you to pop over to our Crayon Art project at CBC Parents to see how it’s done! The process … Continue reading
Well, our Valentine’s crafting comes to an end today. 
We made one last cute craft for the kids to take home to Mom and Dad tonight. We made these last year, and while I don’t usually do “repeat” crafts here, these are really cute, and most of the kids here today weren’t with us last year when we made them.
I poured 2 colours of paint in a tray, and we used a sponge brush to paint the Hooligans’ hands. 
Then they made prints onto cream coloured paper.
Once dry, I cut around the prints in a heart shape, and then again with some “lacy” scissors and red card stock.
It was good, messy fun, and when we were finished washing up, we had some great pink water to pour into spray bottles, and take outside!
Happy Valentine’s Day!!
We made a cute little craft today. Ours aren’t quite as gorgeous as the ones that were the inspiration behind them. Check out THESE pretty little numbers ! Did you heart skip a beat like mine did? Aren’t they over-the-top adorable? As soon as I saw them, I started thinking about how we were going to make them with materials that I had on hand (read: I was not about to go out and buy wooden frames, and as much as I LOVE the look of the fabric background, I thought it might be easier if we stuck with paper).
So here’s our version,
coloured sticks, buttons and cardstock
and this is what we used to make ‘em.
I’d originally planned to paint popsicle sticks for the frame, but the weather was gorgeous, and we have all this new, fluffy snow, and we just wanted to get outside, and enjoy the morning, so at the last minute, to save time, I decided we’d use these skinny coloured sticks. Not sure what they’re technically called, but I have a ton of them, and they’re already coloured, and they’re vibrantly coloured. They didn’t exactly give us the framed effect I was shooting for, but what the heck…
Now this was totally a joint effort craft. While the Hooligans were gluing the buttons on their hearts, I was putting the frames together with the hot glue gun.
Then I hot-glued the frame to a piece of bright cardstock, and cut around the frame with some fancy-schmancy scissors.
When the Hooligans finished their button hearts, they glued those into the frames. 
So, definitely not an entirely kid-made craft, but pretty darned cute, just the same. 
What are you crafting for Valentine’s Day?
We made this Valentine’s craft today, using a really neat technique. If you’ve never tried painting with credit cards before, you really must.
I love how easy this process is to set up and to do. It produces gorgeous results and provides a wonderful opportunity for children to learn about colour mixing.
Drizzle the paint over your canvas. This is a great way for your child to learn how to control the flow of paint. Talk to him or her about squeezing the tube of paint gently and moving his or her arms in a circular or back and forth motion over the canvas as they’re squeezing.
Now, hand the credit cards over to the kids (hmmmm, you don’t hear that often!), and have them scrape and blend the paint colours altogether. I find this part of the process fascinating, and I love to hear the children’s reactions to what they’re seeing and creating. 
Doesn’t it look gorgeous? 
The rest of it is fairly self-explanatory. Once the paint had dried, I cut a large heart out of each of the pieces of cardboard.
Then the Hooligans glued crumpled squares of tissue paper all around the edge of the heart.
And there you have it! Simple, free, and pretty darn cute!
I loved the whole scrape-painting process, that we made a few more works of art to hang on the walls of our new playroom. 