heart clips

Chick has spent the past year pawing through the brown paper bag filled with the valentines her classmates bestowed upon her last year. She loves the glitter, the hearts, the tissue paper, and the occasional super hero, and she finds satisfaction in attributing each valentine to its creator. So, when I brought up making valentines for her classmates this year, she was determined to get it just right, which meant: hearts and gold glitter. Not silver glitter. It needed to have fancy gold glitter because yellow is her new favorite color. I decided that it might be fun to make something that her friends could use or wear, which led to a big Sunday morning, snuggled in bed, brainstorm session. After lots of heart drawings and ideas, we decided that we’d make gold glittered heart clothespins. We figured that kids can use it to hang stuff in their room or even wear it clipped to a jacket. Chick plans to write each child’s name on a paper heart, which will be clipped by the clothespin.

I know this sounds like so much thought and hoopla for one tiny project, but this is the sort of thinking and planning that Chick and I love to do together. She takes it so seriously and is so proud of the final product. We did this project in lots of small steps. In fact, we aren’t quite finished making all of them yet. I’ve found that it has been a nice activity to revisit in quiet moments during the day, like after dinner or while Miss. Mouse naps.

Materials:
paint
kraft paper
scissors
cereal box panel
Mod Podge
glitter
tacky glue (or hot glue gun)
clothespins

1. The first step was painting a big sheet of kraft paper with lots of Valentine’s Day colors. Chick did this all by herself, and after becoming one with her art, she ended up looking like one big Valentine. The beautiful streaks and mottled colors ended up giving the hearts a nifty tie dye sort of look.

2. After the paint dried, Chick drew lots of hearts on the back of the painted kraft paper. I love how lopsided and wonky her hearts are. Don’t they totally scream “I love you?” Then, I cut up the big piece of paper into smaller squares, and let her cut out each of her hearts. I made a few of my own, too, since I couldn’t resist.

3. We used Mod Podge to glue the hearts onto the back of some cereal box panels. I coated the panel with the Mod Podge, put the heart down, and then coated it again. Chick quickly sprinkled/poured gold glitter onto the wet, gluey hearts. You could just use gold sparkle Mod Podge (which would give them a nice even sparkle), but I already had regular Mod Podge and gold glitter in the house. As you can see we have less of a nice, even, thin layer of sparkle situation and more of a thick, crust of sparkle. But, you know, it is authentic to the artist’s vision.

4. Once the glitter extravaganza dried, I carefully cut out the hearts being sure to honor the shape of Chick’s sweet, imperfect, earnest hearts.

5. Finally, I used some tacky glue (or you can use your best friend – the hot glue gun) to glue the hearts onto the clothespins.

As I type, Chick is frantically writing little notes for pinning with the clothespins. Busy, busy.

Happy weekend to all!

xo e