Total Time 2 to 3 hours Ages school-age
Here's a pretty decoration for your bedroom, classroom or anywhere you'd like to add a little Valentine cheer. Cardboard tubes can be bent into whatever shape you like once they are painted,. Be sure to work with them while they are still pliable, within the first hour of being painted, as once they've dried overnight they become quite stiff.
by Amanda Formaro
What you'll need
3 4-inch cardboard tubes
Paint: burgundy and dark pink
Scissors
Glue stick
Yarn
White craft glue
Pony beads (pink, white, purple)
4 large buttons
12-inch wooden dowel
Variations:
Instead of a dowel and a yarn hanger, you could use a clothes hanger instead.
How to make it
1. Paint the inside and outside of two of the cardboard tubes burgundy and one of them dark pink. Allow them to dry about 20-30 minutes, so that they are dry to the touch but the cardboard still feels a little damp.
2. Flatten the cardboard tube and cut into 8 equal pieces. Repeat for the other two cardboard tubes.
3. Cut each mini tube open so that when stretched out it becomes one long strip.
4. Stretch out two strips. Apply glue stick to the end of one strip.
5. Place the second strip on top of the first and squeeze the ends together to make the glue adhere.
6. Holding the glue section with your fingers, bend the long ends out, one to the left and the other to the right.
7. Still holding the glued section, curl the long ends inward to create the humps of the heart. Apply glue stick to attach the humps together.
8. Once you have created all of your hearts (you will have 12 all together, 8 burgundy and 4 dark pink) add a little white glue in between the humps of one of the burgundy hearts. Insert the point end of one of the pink hearts into the glue, connecting the two hearts. Repeat this process inserting a burgundy heart above the pink heart. You will have three hearts, burgundy, pink, burgundy, attached together. Repeat this for the remaining hearts.
9. Add some white craft glue to the top of each heart trio and insert a 36-inch strand of yarn for each one. Thread on some pony beads then add a button.
10. Wrap the yarn around the dowel and glue at the loose end. Repeat for the other three strands.
11. Make a hanger from yarn by tying at both ends of the dowel.
Crafts
