easy valentine's day craft idea

If you're like me, you often find yourself thinking of ideas on how to keep your kids entertained throughout the day. Given it's February, I decided to try out some fun, EASY, Valentine's Day craft ideas to pass the time, and they were really fun and simple, so I had to share them with you! 

My two parameters for these activities were this: 1. we had to already have everything in the house (it's Chicago in February, I do not want to go out in the cold!) and 2. they couldn't be too messy. I also wanted to make a holder for their school Valentine's, so the craft would be dual purpose - fun and practical. Now that's my kind of activity.

The ideal age range for these crafts would be 2 - 5 years, with the younger children needing a bit more assistance and perhaps a slightly bigger mess. Here's all you need for BOTH crafts.

Craft 1: Paper Bag Craft Supplies:

1. Brown Paper Bag
2. Paint (as many or few colors as you would like)
3. Toilet Paper Roll

Craft 2: Heart Bag Craft Supplies

1. Small plain colored craft bag (we chose pink)
2. Paint (as many or few colors as you would like)
3. Q-tips (can also use a pencil eraser)
4. Paper cut-out heart
5. Tape

We'll start with craft 1 since it was by far the easiest of the two. Prior to getting started I would recommend placing a paper towel underneath the brown lunch bag to minimize mess. For this craft, all you need to do is simply fold the toilet paper roll down in half to make a heart. It will look like this.

All you need to do is dip one end of the toilet paper roll into the paint and then press it down onto the bag. I showed Evie this one time and she instantly got the hang of it! I will say she was so determined to mix up the colors and see what happened. 

The finished product was so adorable and I could tell Evie was proud of what she made. We had a lot of fun talking about colors and seeing what happened when they mixed togehter. All together this took about 20 minutes from start to finish. 

Onto craft number 2! This one requires a little more work with set-up. I took a piece of black construction paper and cut out a heart. Then tape the heart onto the gift bag, place the bag over some paper towels and you're ready to get started. Since we mixed up our colors in the previous activity, we decided we would use separate 'dabbers' for this craft. In the end, it didn't really matter, but it was fun to talk about the different ways we could create this piece of art. 

To start, all you have to do is take your dabber, dip it in the paint and place it anywhere on the bag. Evie had a lot of fun using different colors all around the bag, sometimes dabbing, sometimes painting, but the whole time she was pretty serious about her artwork.

She was content to keep on painting, so I let her go as long as she wanted. Finally, she decided she was done and we peeled off the heart and viola! Valetine's Day treat bag to bring to school! This craft took around 30 minutes and was a little messier than the previous craft. 

There you have it! Two relatively easy, low mess and very fun craft ideas for Valentine's Day. If you make them, share the details in the comments below and let me know what you think! Happy Valentine's Day!