How-To: Kid-Made Puzzle Piece Valentine

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World way back in 2013.

Missing some pieces of your jigsaw puzzle, but still have a few mitchy-matchy ones? 

Your kiddos can create one handmade Valentine from just two perfectly fitting jigsaw pieces. Give them most of a box, and they can make all the Valentines for their class party. 

It's a fun upcycling project that won't cost you a cent. Yay for an eco-friendly Valentine's Day!

Here's how:

Big or small, edge or middle, this project relies on two linking puzzle pieces. Have your kiddos sort the remaining pieces from an incomplete jigsaw puzzle into linking pairs (save other orphaned puzzle pieces for more crafty upcycling projects!), then let them paint each pair a fun background color. My kiddos chose every color from red to green to black, and made themselves a glorious happy mess while they did so.

Set the pairs aside to dry, taking apart the pieces first so that they won't adhere to each other.

When the puzzle pieces are dry, fit them together again and show the kiddos how to paint a single heart onto the middle of the pairs, so that approximately half the heart rests on each piece. The kiddos can continue to decorate the pieces as they wish, with glitter and stickers and the other gaudy accouterments of kid-made greeting cards.

Once again, separate the pieces and let them dry. When everything is dry and set, the heart puzzle will be able to be taken apart and put together again. The kiddos can use the back side of their Valentines to write their name and some sort of horrible, punny Valentine greeting.

May I suggest "I love you to pieces?" Okay, I'm going to go vomit now.

How to Make Origami Hearts

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World back in 2016.

Curious about origami? Wanting to bust some paper stash? Make origami hearts! 

 These little origami hearts are quick and easy to make, and they look adorable. Here's how to fold them: 

  1. Start with a strip of paper. Any paper will do for this project, from brown paper bags to wrapping paper scraps to bits of your favorite scrapbook paper. You can also play with the size of your strip, although I tend to always use the same size strips that we use for our paper chains: 1"x6". 

 HINT: I work a lot with upcycled papers and scrapbook paper, and I've gotten into the habit of cutting down my scraps at the end of a project into the three types of paper ephemera that I use most often: 1" circles, 1.25" hearts, and these 1"x6" strips. They store more easily and attractively, and whenever the kids and I have the urge to do some crafting, we've already got a ready stash of our favorite supplies. 

  2. Valley fold your paper strip in half. Crease the fold with the back of your thumbnail.  

3. Fold each side down to meet the center line. Crease the fold.  

4. Flip the piece over to the back side, and turn it upside down. 

 5. Fold each of the two top pieces down to meet the bottom straight edge. Crease the folds.  

6. Fold the corners of each of the top two pieces down to meet in the middle. This is the trickiest part to get even, since you don't have a vertical line of symmetry here to guide you. If you'd like, you can always fold that line yourself; you'll have two extra creases on your heart, but it won't affect anything.  

Turn your piece back over, and you'll see your heart! 

 If you'd like to make sure that your heart stays flat, you can always glue those top four corners down.

 These hearts are so quick and easy to make that you'll have a pile of them before you know it, and that's okay! They make good embellishments for Valentines, and cute embellishments or even gift tags for presents. Thread them onto floss for a simple bunting, or stamp your business info on them and hand them out with your handmade products. 

 Or, you know, just hoard them because they're so pretty. That's what I do! 

Work Plans for the Week of February 10, 2014: Project Week

It's another Project Week! The kids have been really busy lately with all sorts of projects of their own creation, from valentine crafting and rubber band bracelet weaving and clay modeling--

--to fort building and fashion design--

--and lots and lots of sewing:

My personal hopes for the week are to get some serious progress made on Syd's fashion show garment, to figure out how to use my bottle cutter, and to get started on some improvements to our chicken habitat (we need an automatic door on a timer, but for some reason I can't get the idea of a chicken yard webcam out of my head).

Right now, however, both children are hard at work on their valentines mailboxes, Syd up here with some cardboard mailers and duct tape, and Will downstairs with hammer, nails, wood, and our portable work bench. I taught her how to measure a straight line, clamp the wood to the bench, and saw through it with our hand saw, but I'm not ruling out the possibility of getting out the circular saw later.

And maybe the bench grinder?

Definitely the cordless drill.

Probably not the scroll saw, but who am I to rule out power tools?

Be My Valentine 2013

Despite the fact that I didn't do a lot, personally, to celebrate this year, Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays. I'm nine years old and barf at romance, and so our celebrations are usually of my favorite, family-centered type. Pink and red are great colors to work with, the heart is iconic, and any occasion that encourages people to send handmade greeting cards, and inspires our homeschool group to throw one of our "class parties," is an okay holiday by me!

Valentine-themed woodworking project at our local Lowe's Build-and-Grow Clinic

These workshops are among my kiddos' favorite activities, EVER. And they're free!!!

making valentines for their pen pals and our homeschool class party

Syd made an assortment of valentines, including a few that I let her make from our building block stash

Will took her cardboard necklace project one step further by using wood discs from our stash

How can you not love a valentine made using POWER TOOLS?!?

I kept my mouth entirely shut about how she scribbled on each disc in gel pen for decoration, even though we have plenty of scrapbook paper and a heart punch that would have been JUST the right size for the discs

She cut embroidery floss and threaded it through the hole in each disc, gave it to me to knot the floss well, then wrapped it around an index card, taped it down, and wrote "From Willow" on the card. And I tell you what, she got a HUGE thrill seeing how many kids put on her necklace right away after receiving it. 

I never regret keeping my mouth shut.

I didn't keep my mouth shut when I asked Matt to help the girls make our traditional Valentine's Day mailbox  instead of me and he instead concocted some weird thing with shipping boxes, aluminum foil, and a box knife, but of course they turned out great, too:

Although, you know, MY mailbox project has a cute little flag with the kid's name on it. Next year...

In fact, other than the party, all we really did THIS year was buy red carnations for the living room

The girls have been such good sports with their lousy-feeling, crabby, tired, humorless mother this winter, however, that I've been keeping my head busy planning some extra-fun activities for us to do now that I'm feeling better (knock on wood!). And those activities may, indeed, involve the colors red and pink, and various varieties of the heart shape.

It'll be Valentine's Day 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Happy Valentine's Day

My girls are giddy with anticipation for our class Valentine's Day party later. Their Valentine mailboxes are ready and waiting (one pink one, and one monster-mouth one), Syd is obsessively remaking several of her Valentines that she this morning decided are inferior in quality, Willow is putting off finishing up the last step of her Valentines and is instead taking apart our hot glue gun that caught fire this weekend, and I'm trying to decide if I have the energy to figure out the pink popcorn that I had wanted to take to the party, or if I should just grab that bag of pretzels from the counter and call it good.

It's going to be a lovely day.

Rainbow Beeswax Stacked Heart

New in my pumpkin+bear etsy shop, a stacked heart in rainbow colors:

Stacked, they make a sturdier decoration in our nature basket, but to us, they're far more entrancing separated. They girls want to make them into Valentines, but they're actually a little too difficult for them to punch out by themselves, and I am NOT going to be the one to punch out a beeswax heart for every kid at the Valentine's Day party (I'm thinking of handing them a sheet of beeswax, a sharp pencil, and an x-acto knife for freehand heart-making, so I'll let you know how that goes, with full disclosure of Band-aids used), but I will punch out a few sets for family use, and I'm already really excited about the future bunting that will be. 

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Puzzles!

a round-up of crafts for orphaned puzzle pieces

and a puzzle piece Valentine craft of our very own

In other news, I am in my fourth day of the flu, or whatever coughing, aching, sneezing, feverish, breathless, respiratory virus that is indistinguishable from the flu. I'm past the phase of lying like a slug in misery, past the acute phase of wondering if I was going to add to Indiana's viral mortality rate this year, past that one evening when I crawled out of bed (literally crawled), then decided that crawling back into bed was too much effort and instead dragged some blankets down on top of me on the floor.

Now I'm in that phase of feeling too lousy to get back to my life, but too restless to keep lying here while the children bicker over math worksheets and making their own lunch in another room. I'm bored by Netflix instant, bored by my Buffy Season Eight graphic novel collection from the library, bored by Doctor Who fanfiction, completely out of Baked Lay's and orange juice back here in the "sick room" that Matt, on the advice of, I kid you not, www.flu.gov, has deemed is my designated area. 

If you've already had the flu this season, you should come over and entertain me. I'll let you read to me if you promise to do all the voices, and I also really like show tunes.

Wet-on-Wet Watercolor Valentines

Having to make the number of Valentines that the girls are having to make this year is a novelty for us. At Montessori, the children were encouraged to make Valentines only for whomever they wanted--instead of 30 mass-produced Valentines, the children usually received anywhere from six to a dozen lovingly hand-crafted Valentines from their dearest schoolmates, and they could make their own Valentines to give to their own dearest schoolmates in one inspired crafting session.

That's not really practical for the homeschool Valentine's Day party that the children are attending next week, of course. Although there are some homeschooled children that the girls have playdates with, just as there are some Montessori children and some public school children and some preschool children that they play with, there will also be homeschooled children at the party who may not know anyone else yet, and so obviously everybody needs a Valentine, not just the special buddies.

A couple dozen Valentines per kid is a LOT of Valentines, however, and so I've found myself setting up little art projects every day, encouraging the girls to play with a fun supply or a method that we haven't used in a while, and in the process doing a few Valentines. The girls, for instance, LOVE to play with their dad's Prismacolor markers, and so several Valentines got knocked out in that art project. Wet-on-wet watercolor is also super fun--

 --and that's how Sydney finished her Valentines:

Will hasn't had her nose out of a book or her face out of a computer (Newest obsession? Jumpstart Second Grade World from the library) long enough to come even close to finishing her Valentines, so I still get to whip out the Do-a-Dot markers, and then perhaps the heart-shaped rubber stamps, and I think I'm going to see if they'd like to send postcard Valentines to their other friends and family, so don't worry, the Valentines aren't nearly over yet.

Artist's Paper Valentines: Prismacolor Marker on Bristol Board

We're getting a bit of a jump on Valentine's Day this year, since our homeschool group's Valentine's Day party is this week. So even though I have many more and more elaborate Valentine's Day projects planned for me and the kiddos in the next coupla weeks, our actual Valentines need to be sweet and simple.

A gorgeous Valentine doesn't need to be elaborate; professional artist's markers are beautifully saturated when used on sturdy white Bristol board, and all I need to do is cut the Bristol board into hearts and hand them over to the kiddos to draw on.

It's funny how each girl's personality is easy to see in her Valentines. Sydney has princesses, and princess gardens, and princesses watering their gardens on her Valentines:

And more princesses, and one prince:

And, of course, a fancy signature on the back of each one:

Willow, on the other hand, has this kind of farmer girl nature study going on with her Valentines:

She's got a pepper, and a pumpkin, and the Loch Ness monster, and some deer drawn with a really great perspective. I may hide that deer done as a line drawing and keep it for my ownself.

Little Kids Make Awesome Valentines

After the girls did their time making Valentines----their reward was to receive an ample supply of Valentines in return.

Montessori is probably a little different from many other schools, in that handmade Valentines are strongly encouraged (one is subject to militancy on many fronts when one's child is attending a fancy-pants private school--I also have to bring in homemade treats on the girls' birthday party days, and they can't have sugar, and if you try to send your kid to school in mittens that are too thin, you WILL get chastised). People are still allowed to be busy, so the girls always do get a store-bought Valentine or two in their bags (and one Valentine came with a piece of candy! I bet my life that the head teacher and at LEAST two sets of parents had a total fit about that one), but the beauty of the average preschooler's handmade Valentine really is a sight to behold.

Since this is Syd's first, and last, Montessori Valentine's Day, here are HER favorite handmade Valentines:

I also don't know if every little kid does this, or if the handmade factor makes them extra-special, but my girls TREASURE their Valentines. They carry them around, they pore over them, they painstakingly read/memorize each signature and greeting. For the last two years, Willow has literally loved her Valentines to death, and after some inevitable milk spill or bathtub accident I was left with absolutely zero momentos to hold onto for her.

This year, then, I'm afraid that in a few more days, before we've pushed our luck too far, the bags of Valentines will mysteriously disappear. They'll be rediscovered several years later in the girls' keepsake boxes, but I'll go to my grave denying any and all responsibility for the theft. The mystery, like the Valentines, will endure.

Valentines Made by Artists

The girls are less interested in prepping for Valentine's Day than they are in it just BEING Valentine's Day already, but nevertheless, even children have obligations, and Valentine's Day likely incurs the greatest obligations for the under-12 set than any other holiday.

Y'all, we have GOT to make some Valentines.

The girls' school does permit store-bought Valentines, although not Valentines with media characters, so I'm not sure how you're supposed to work that one, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend a penny on this Hallmark holiday when we are perfectly capable of constructing our own Valentines with stuff we already own, and stuff that is, thus, free.

Therefore the daily sweatshop. Which is also really not that bad because the children are also not asked to bring a Valentine for everyone in their class, but just their special friends. To keep even that lesser amount from getting monotonous, I set out a different Valentine activity every day, so that there's a little more impetus to keep crafting, and no, they are NOT allowed to make every single Valentine be for their mutual friend Ella.

The day before yesterday, the girls made one tray of melted crayon hearts, which is three hearts for each of them to give out. Yesterday was far more productive, with the creation of Artist Trading Card Valentines being fun enough for the girls to make about a dozen total:Willow did most of hers with colored pencil, but Sydney got really into coloring her ATC, then gluing beads onto it:
I found that fun, too:

I got into the habit last year of giving out Artist Trading Cards instead of business cards at craft fairs (I always prefer performing a labor-intensive task over spending any kind of money whatsoever), so if there are any Valentines left unsent, I will be happy to have them join the Pumpkin+Bear ATC stash.

For today's Valentines, I'm thinking of setting out this huge stash of plastic "stained glass" suncatchers and paint that my mother bought for the girls the last time we visited. The girls can have the fun of painting them, and then they can leave my house and be someone else's chore to hang up and display and surreptitiously get rid of when the kids aren't looking.