How To: DIY Valentine’s Day Cards

DIY

Valentine’s Day Cards

By Amber Bouthot

Whether your child needs some Valentine’s Day cards to hand out at school or you want to sprinkle your friends with sweet surprises, you can create your own cute and meaningful Valentines. Here are some ideas.

Clothespin Airplanes

These are a blast to make. The airplanes are a cute craft idea on their own and adding a Valentine message makes it extra fun.

Supplies: • Clothespins with a spring • Popsicle sticks (2 per plane) • Corrugated cardboard • Paint • Paint brushes

• Hot glue 1• Construction paper • Scissors Step 1: Assemble your pieces.

For each plane, you’ll need two popsicle sticks, one clothespin, and one mini popsicle stick. Cut cardboard segments for the struts between the wings of the bi-plane. Make the cardboard segments just tall enough that the top wing will sit above the clothespin and not attached to it. Cut a segment of a popsicle stick to be a tail. Step 2: Assemble the plane with hot glue. Step 3: Paint your plane. Step 4: Cut out a heart from construction paper and write a cheerful message.

Treat Poppers

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We love this one because it uses upcycled toilet paper rolls.

Supplies: • Toilet paper tubes • Twine or ribbon • Valentine’s day theme tissue paper Step 1: Fold the tissue paper in half lengthwise and cute a piece that’s approximately 10-12” long. Place the toilet paper tube on the tissue paper and tape into place. Roll the tube up completely in the tissue paper and then secure it with tape. Step 2: Use twine or ribbon to tie off one end of the tissue paper. Step 3: Fill the tube with party favors and candy, and then tie off the other end. • Small party favors and candy • White glue • Scissors • Tape

Butterfly Valentines

Smarties make the perfect butterfly body, and you can use scrapbook paper in fun Valentine’s prints for the wings.

Supplies: • White card stock • Pipe cleaner • Scrapbook paper • Scissors • Smarties • White glue • Small buttons • Hot glue • Google eyes Step 1: Create your pattern. Cut out a small heart and slightly 3 larger heart from card stock. Trace them onto another piece of cardstock. Fold cardstock in half and cut out the wing shape. Each butterfly has one white wing piece cut from card stock, and two large hearts and two small hears from scrapbook papers. Step 2: Glue the hears to the card stock with white glue. Cut antennas from pipe cleaners. Step 3: Glue the google eyes to the button. Glue the pipe cleaner antennas to the other side of the button. Attach smarties with hot glue, and then glue the face to the top of the smarties.

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Paint Swatch Bookmarks

These make especially thoughtful gifts for classmates, teachers, and book lovers.

Supplies: • Paint swatches • Heart-shaped hole punch • Ribbon Step 1: Punch heart shaped holes in each square of the paint swatch. Step 2: Punch a hole at the top and attach ribbon. a