Valentine Collage Heart Banner

I'm not the biggest fan of this upcoming holiday but one aspect I do like is all of the handmade gifts. Similar to Christmas, it seems like everyone goes all crafty gung-ho for their V-Day cards and gifts. Always more thoughtful to send something handmade than store bought! 

It's even cuter when it's something handmade by a kiddo. My first graders and I made some adorable collage heart banners this week for Valentine's Day. I did this project last year with my kiddos but changed it slightly...so it's Heart Banner 2.0! They're super easy to make and work as a Valentine gift or just decoration. 

Supplies:

• assorted small strips of paper (we used graph paper, red/pink construction, shiny silver and pink paper and tissue paper)
• a sheet of normal paper sized 8.5" x 11"
• a sheet of larger paper in a different color
• a sharpie or marker
• scissors
• a glue stick
• yarn or ribbon

1. Cover the ENTIRE front of the 8.5 x 11 paper with the little strips of paper. They can overlap each other too, just make sure they're glued down really well. 

2. Flip the paper over and draw hearts all over the back. They can be the same size or vary. We got about 8 hearts from one sheet of paper.

3. On the larger sheet of paper, draw hearts slightly larger than the first page of hearts. Make sure you draw the same amount as the other page so each heart has a pair. 

4. Cut out all of the hearts! With little ones, it's a good exercise for practicing cutting along a line. Took a little while to cut out all 16 hearts too! This is the exciting part because the kiddos don't know exactly what the hearts will look like when they're cut out! 

5. Make heart sandwiches! Space the larger hearts out with the string on top of them. Put lots of glue on the underside of the collaged hearts and glue on top of the large heart, sandwiching the string between the two hearts. Glue hearts all along the string until you run out of hearts. 

Optional: Have the kiddos decorate the hearts! We had bottles of glitter glue but stickers or markers would work too! Then hang up them up! 

It got a little hectic when we broke out the glitter glue for them to decorate but the kiddos really enjoyed it! Even the boys didn't mind playing with pink paper for an hour. 

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Edit: Hey friends! I also just got notified that I'm nominated for a Best of Blog Awards in the Best of Blogger Shops: Best Arts and Prints category over at My So-Called Chaos! If you feel so inclined, you can vote for me here (I'm in the last section of the voting categories).  Angie is such a sweetheart for putting these awards on, and it's so sweet of someone out there to nominate me! Definitely made my day!