When we signed my two girls up for the homeschooler Valentine party, I had no idea that 60 kids would sign up. OK, technically, there are so far 56 registered but with 4 others that look plausible.
Each child is to decorate a box to collect their Valentines in, and to make a Valentine to hand out to each attending guest.
2 Kids X 60 party goers = 120 Valentines
Of course, my girls wanted to hand make them all. So, I figured, since we're already going to the effort of making the Valentines, the least I could do is share our "creativity" with you.
We got the idea when we went to the Magic House Children's Museum on Friday. We didn't realize that the museum didn't open until noon because there was a field trip going on. However, they had the art studio open. We've been to the Magic House many times, but we've never really dabbled in their art studio. Since we showed up at 10:30, and the rest of the museum didn't open till noon - We had plenty of time to create.
We decided to make Valentine bookmarks.
We used their texture plates to color and make different patterns of designs on white paper. Since you will probably be making these in your house and not at an art studio inside a museum, similar textures can be created by placing the white sheet of paper on top of various household items or even hard plastic toys.
Some ideas of things around the house that could create some great texture includes:
- bricks on a fireplace hearth
- coins
- screens from kitchen strainers
- wicker baskets
- Texture plates from Crayola craft kits or fashion plates from doll fashion design booklets
- Look around and use your imagination - Trial and error just adds to the learning experience
We, then used their heart punch stamp to cut heart shapes into the colored textured paper.
After we punched out heart shapes, we cut strips filled with rows of punched cut hearts and glued the strips to construction paper. After that, we cut each long strip in half, alternating between some scrapbook edge design scissors and regular straight-edged scissors.
To finish the bookmarks off, we single hole punched the top and tied it with some pretty yarn. Then, after I got home, I typed and printed out part of I Corinthians 13 (the Love Chapter) to add some scripture.
Since we didn't quite have enough bookmark Valentines to reach the 120 quota, we decided to get even more creative and make some Pixie Stix arrows through the heart. These were even easier. We started by cutting a piece of construction paper into four equal squares, and folding each square in half.
Next step was to cut a half of heart shape, with the fold in the middle.
While the heart is still folded, punch through the center with a hole punch.
Then, thread a Pixie Sitx through the hole, and open up the heart to get ready to glue a scripture strip and decorations and to sign.
Here's some of our final products:
