Valentine's Day crafts for kids

Guest blog by Georgia Coote

I know it’s often seen as cheesy, but we love Valentine’s Day in our house! The children love it the most, seeing as there’s often a few treats involved as well as some themed making and extra special indulgent dinners. Here are a few simple but extra fun Valentine's craft ideas for big day.

Heart garland

These colourful heart garlands add some extra love to your festivities. You can hang them off the ends of your shelves, on a mantlepiece, or draped amongst your gallery wall.

These are so easy to do - when my girls were younger I’d keep a big pile of their paintings and drawings from nursery for this type of crafting. You’ll need a bunch of drawings/paintings, as well as a glue stick, some string or twine, and scissors.

If you don’t have any pre-made drawings or scribbles, you can get making some with crayons. These Colourful Creatures silky crayons are just the thing and are especially great for younger children as you don’t need to apply much pressure to get a really vibrant mark.

Colourful Creatures silky crayons, £9.95

How to make the garland

1) Colour some sheets of card or paper using the silky crayons, or get some pre-made coloured sheets together.

2) Cut out the hearts. You could use a heart shape cookie cutter to cut around or anything else heart shaped you have, but I tend to like them in all their homemade wonky glory! You need to cut two hearts out at a time, so double up your paper/card. The way I’ve taught my kids to cut out hearts is to fold the card/paper in half (for this garland you’ll need two of each heart, so layer up here) and then cut out half a heart with the fold running along its vertical centre (think butterfly wings!) and then unfold and you have a whole heart - in this case two! 

3) Now cut a length of string, the amount that you’d like for your entire garland, and put it aside.

4) Glue the plain side of each of your hearts and then run the piece of twine horizontally across the middle of the heart and place the other heart on top to sandwich it in.

5) Repeat until you have a length of hearts ready to hang. Tip: Make sure you leave enough twine either side to hang your garlands.

Variation: To make a washi-taped heart simply cut some hearts out of paper or card, then tape over the shape and trim off the excess. Sandwich onto twine as above.

Here's the final result!

Also shown: Anchovies storage tin, £8.95

Cupcake toppers

There is nothing nicer than a bit of extra sweetness on Valentine’s Day and these little cupcake toppers are so cute and a real cinch to make. 

Also shown: Wild Flowers tea towel, £5.95

You could make them out of anything, scraps of wrapping paper, newspaper or any pretty papers you have to hand. It’s lovely to get the children involved by using their precious scribbles, so again I’ve used the silky crayons to create these toppers.

1) Cut out one heart from some coloured in paper.

2) Use washi tape to tape the cocktail stick to the shape.

3) Pop into a cake and present to your loved one!

Love Monster cards

These Love Monster cards are such a fun Valentine's Day craft for kids, and are ideal for giving to friends, neighbours or anyone you fancy sending a little love. All you need is crayons, some card and googly eyes. Simply scribble in a rough circle and add the eyes! You can then add any messages you wish. 

Happy Valentine's Day! If you're looking for a gift that says 'I saw this and thought of you', be sure browse our extensive gift collection.