Quick and Easy Valentine's Day Crafts

As Valentine’s Day approaches, we have found some sweet and simple crafts to make for someone special in your life. They are not very hard crafts to make. You might already have many of the supplies handy at home.

First up...yarn heart. This one is super simple. Find some yarn in the colour that you want your heart to be. Next find some sturdy cardboard. I had a box that I was recycling so we cut that up. Trace whatever size heart you want to make onto the cardboard and cut it out. 

Tie the yarn around the heart to secure it and tape the end of the yarn onto the heart. Begin to wrap. Wrap in all directions and to whatever thickness you like; tie a knot at the end when you're done. 

Eventually you have something like this... You can attach something to hang it up with or you can lay it down somewhere as a decoration.

https://www.easypeasyandfun.com/yarn-wrapped-hearts-craft/

This next one is more for the kids. It super cute! We’re going to use hearts to make a Valentine bee.

You will need red or pink, black, and yellow cardstock. Cut two large hearts from each of these colours (ours are 3 ¼ inches wide and about 2 inches deep from the middle indent of the heart to the bottom point).

You will also need two red smaller hearts (we punched them with our 1 inch heart punch) and two mini hearts which we punched out as well. The mini hearts are for the “mouth” so you want them to be a bit smaller.

Use a black heart for the bottom and then layer yellow on top, then black, and then yellow again. Make sure there is an even amount of each colour showing in the layers except for the last yellow heart which you will see all of because that is the face.

Glue on the red heart wings next so that they stick out from each side.

Now for the antennas, you can use pipe cleaners if you have them or we just cut out some slightly curvy antennas out of black cardstock. Attach your medium hearts to the ends of these.

Lastly you have to complete your face. Get as fancy as you would like. You can use stickers, googly eyes, or you can draw on two little eyes like we did. We drew a little smiley face and then put those mini hearts at either ends. Cute!

https://fromabcstoacts.com/bee-mine-valentine/

If you want a no fuss super easy craft, then this one’s for you. You will need some coloured paper or patterned paper which is what we used. Cardstock is too thick for this.

Cut a large fat heart out of your paper. Ours measured 7 inches wide and 5 ¼ inches from the middle indent to the bottom point.

If you are using patterned paper, then put it pattern side down and then fold the sides towards the centre so that they overlap slightly.

Fold the top towards the middle so that it looks like an envelope.

Now fold your envelope flap down (it should be a triangle) and close it with a heart sticker. 

Before sealing it you can write a love/special message in the centre of the heart so when someone opens it up, they see your message.

https://www.marthastewart.com/269660/folding-envelope-hearts

I’ve kept the most complex out of these simple Valentine’s crafts for last.

Out of some sturdy cardstock, make a template of a 2 inch wide heart to trace along with a 3 inch one. We cut our smaller hearts out of a pattern piece of paper and another one out of our homemade pink paper. The two bigger hearts were cut out of a white cardstock that had a simple 3D line design on it.

Now glue the little heart onto the middle of the big heart.

With an exacto knife cut around the bottom half of your inside smaller heart, almost like you are tracing it with your knife. You should have a little slit to slip the pages of a book through.

https://www.marthastewart.com/273705/heart-bookmark

Here are all the finished products. Super easy to make and super cute!

DIY Chinese New Year Red Envelope

Today is Chinese New Year’s Eve. We always have a big homemade dinner on the Eve to celebrate and then leftovers the day after because you’re not supposed to cook or do any work on Chinese New Year ’s Day. In addition to all of the yummy food, one of the big traditions is to hand out red envelopes (typically married people hand them out to unmarried people). We thought it’d be a cool idea to make our own red envelope in honour of the year of the rooster and give you a little step by step guide so that you too can make your own little red Chinese New Year envelopes. 

2017 is the year of the Fire Rooster. Rooster is almost the epitome of fidelity and punctuality. People born in the Year of Rooster  are said to be honest, bright, communicative and ambitious. Some notable roosters are... Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Elton John, Jennifer Aniston, Cate Blanchett, Diane Sawyer, Elijah Wood, Jessica Alba, Matthew McConaughey, Matt Damon, Natalie Portman, Catherine the Great, Amelia Earhart, Rudyard Kipling, Groucho Marx, Roger Federer, Serena Williams.

You don’t need too much to make this craft. We’re keeping it simple and sticking with two colours of cardstock, a red and yellowish gold. Red and gold are what you usually find on the red envelopes, but some may have coloured pictures on them as well as red and gold symbols/pictures/words. We thought it easiest to use the Silhouette Portrait, but we realise that not everyone has one so you can easily make this craft without one as well; you’ll just have to do some cutting with the scissors.

We cut out about a 2 ½ inch rooster out of the gold/yellowish cardstock with the Silhouette. You can decorate with stickers, you can find a rooster image (we thought that would be fitting to put on the front for this year), you can draw or write symbols/pictures or you can write words on the front. Then we found a red envelope template roughly measuring 5 ¾ inches from top to bottom including the flap and then cut that out.

You can make a bigger envelope if you like, but this is the usual size for a red envelope. If you decide to go with a bigger red envelope make sure that you adjust the image on the front to that it looks the right size.

After both parts are cut, we folded the red envelope and glued it together and then glued the rooster on the front. Keep in mind that sometimes it's easier to score the parts that you are going to fold.

And here you have it, your very own homemade red envelope!