CRAFTS FOR KIDS: Valentines!



Day 2

 Posted by Ethne~

I will premise this post by saying it is far too late on a worknight to write this for you all, but I can’t manage to put the computer away.  Reminds me of the first time I read Twilight.  If you haven’t read the books yet, you’re either a stubborn fool or you’ve been living underground for the past 3+ years.  Just in time for Valentine’s Day – dear, sweet Edward.

!Te Amo!

I digress….

Today breaks down to two parts.  The first is an activity that kids of all ages can do.  The second is an activity that you can do for your kids (or husband, sister, friend, etc.).

KID CRAFT:  I think it’s great to have the girls do homemade cards.  They don’t write words yet, but they color like masters.  Usually I will write something like ‘Happy Birthday Uncle Scott’ on a piece of blank paper, then give it to KD and Easy Mac to decorate with crayons, markers and stickers.  We did this for family Valentines this year.

Shaun took blank printer paper, cut giant hearts out, and then we gave the hearts to the girls to color. 

Live action shot!

Valentine’s-themed and other stickers were applied as only KD and Easy Mac would see fit, and then I wrote out the ‘Tos’ and ‘Froms’ in the spaces left sticker free.  We counted to make sure we had enough for each of our family members.  The activity was finished in enough time for the girls’ attention span to last.  Bless their hearts.

We love you Mur-Man!

I’ll drop them in the mail to everyone – homemade is way better than storebought!

ADULT FOR-KIDS CRAFT:  Lori and I saw loads of great Valentine’s ideas on one of our fave blogs suttongrace.com.  This envelope that hangs on the back of a chair was a must-have.  Naturally I was going to make it, not buy it, and though it was a Saturday-Sunday activity, I did not want to leave the house for the craft store if I could avoid it.  Fortunately, I had all I needed out of scraps left over from past crafts I’ve done.

MATERIALS: I dug these things out of my craft bins:

White, red and pink felt – a couple of squares of each color are more than enough

White and red embroidery floss; thread

Elmer’s glue

Scissors and pinking shears

Clear sew-on snaps

The size of a piece of felt is roughly the same size as a sheet of printer paper, around 8 ½ x 11”.  That’s the size I went with to keep it simple.

Easy Mac helping cut out felt!

Before sewing the front and back pieces together, I sewed an ‘E’ and ‘K’ onto the lower right corner, as these were going to be for the girls.

K-time!

I sewed the front and back pieces together with my sewing machine 1/2 “ in from the edge – I sewed the two short sides and one long side, leaving the other end open to be the envelope.  I cut the edges of the felt with pinking shears to make it look finished, and then I hand-stitched a decorative stitching in red (with embroidery floss) on top of the sewing lines.

Time to floss!

I cut out the triangular piece to be the flap of the envelope, and sewed that to the back piece of the envelope, on the open-ended side.  While I was sewing the triangle flap on, I also sewed red straps into the seam to use in hanging the envelope on a chair.

I sewed a red heart to the point of the envelope flap; the flap got the red decorative stitching and the heart got white decorative stitching.  I added a few smaller pink hearts as I saw fit, and outlined those in red decorative stitching too.

Stitch-a-roo - freestyle!

The last, slightly tedious step was to sew small snaps on to the envelope back and the hanging straps to hold it onto a chair.  I have clear iron-safe plastic snaps that I used when I made little Cabbage Patch Christmas dresses for the girls last year.  I sewed those on, and then, naturally, I found that the straps were too long for the chairs I used, so I ended up pinning the straps in the right position with safety pins.  It’s ok though – if I use the envelopes on chairs that have a taller back and frame, the straps will work there too.

Teensy snap, you little devil!

The girls think the envelopes are cool, inasmuch as they think anything is cool when there is a little treat waiting for you in it when you get up in the morning.  Today, it was 3 Sweet Tart hearts for being nice, courtesy of Lyle the Elf (fabulous future post!).

Sweet Baby T-Rex modeling for you!

Thanks for giving me pink, Mommy!
Sure thing, Easy Mac!

I will admit, friends, that this project took longer than I anticipated.  Partly it was because I was making 2 of them at once; partly because the hand-stitching is tedious.  Not hard, just tedious.  Doubly-so, in my case.  Including kid interruptions aplenty, I spent a good part of Saturday afternoon and the better part of Sunday morning doing these (in-between baking my homemade cinnamon rolls – future post – yum!)

That's right, from scratch.

If you can fit one or both of these for-kid crafts in this Valentine’s season, I’d say you’re just marvelous!  Now, I best go grab a few Sweet Tarts….and Edward, I mean, Shaun.