Valentine’s : Sewing & Threading

|

Have a go at some great fine motor skills for Valentine’s Day with these Sewing & Threading Valentine’s Day Cards for Kids! A fun Handmade Valentines Card to make and send!

Valentine's Day cards

Welcome to Elise from Creative Play Central  who will be sharing her kids’ wonderful lacing Valentine’s Cards with us today as part of the 31 Days of Love series!!

Hello! I am Elise Ellerman, author of the blog, Creative Play Central (CPC). CPC is my little space to share fun and unique art and play ideas for children. I am passionate about designing and exposing young children to experiences that inspire their creativity so that they develop skills, strategies and behaviours that enable them to “think outside the box”. Find me on Facebook.

My older two children (aged 7 and 5) have recently enjoyed taking the opportunity to sew whenever they can (it’s always fun to practise a new found skill), while my youngest daughter aged 3, is very much into threading beads. So, for this year’s Valentine’s cards we combined my children’s love of sewing and threading as well as painting, to create cards.

Valentine’s Cards Materials:

–        Blank cards (you can make your own with cardboard, or purchase pre-cut cards from a craft store)

–        Brad clips (we used small heart shapes ones as well as small pink brad clips). We bought these from our local craft store. (Tip: longer pronged brad clips are easiest to work with for these cards).

–        Foam Valentine’s Day themed stickers (need to be thick stickers to use for resist painting).

–        Foam alphabet stickers (raised or thick stickers to use for resist painting)

–        Coloured wool

–        Beads

–        Pipe cleaners (to thread the beads onto)

–        Paint

–        – Sponges or brushes  to apply paint

–        Glitter

The photo below shows some of the cards ready to decorate.  The top row of cards have brad clips inserted into the front cover of the card (arranged in a heart shape). I have inserted and secured the clip so that it is slightly raised (so wool can be wound around each brad clip). The bottom two cards have holes ready to be stitched.

Valentine's Day Cards - sewing and threading

Valentine’s Cards Our Process:

My older two children chose the colour of wool to stitch into their heart shapes, while Miss Three happily threaded beads onto two white pipe cleaners joined together (I joined two together because Miss three wanted to make a big heart).

Valentine's cards - sewing and threading

 

As well as stitching, my older children also wound wool around the brad clips to create a woolen heart “frame”.

Valentine's card - wrapping wool around brad clip

 

Once the “frames” (the stitching, threaded beads and wool wound around the brad clip) were complete, it was time to move onto the second part of the process, painting the hearts for inside the “frames”. The beauty of these cards is that you can put whatever you like inside the “frames” – it could be a drawing, a word, a poem, a photo or whatever is special to the recipient of the card.

Valentine's Day cards - resisit painting

 For the painting we decided to go with some resist painting, but you could choose whatever technique you prefer.

I drew the heart outlines (you just need to make sure they will fit inside the stitched, beaded and woollen frames).  My older children then cut them out. Before painting, stick foam or raised stickers onto the hearts. Then, carefully and without using too much paint, use a sponge to paint all over the heart (including the stickers). My children enjoyed experimenting with using different colours (painting a heart red and then dabbing white paint over the red) as well as painting all over the heart and then using a paper towel to soak up any excess paint. Remove the stickers to achieve the resist effect (or not, the card with the beaded heart has the gold letters left on because too much paint seeped under the letters.)

The final step is to glue the painted hearts inside the “frames”.  The beaded heart is held in place by brad clips (the brad clips are inserted on the inside cover of the card  – on the inside of the card you see the head of the brad clips , just cover this section of the card with another piece of plain card – and the prongs stick through to the front of the card. I used the prongs to pinch together and fold over around the pipe cleaner to secure the beaded heart to the card.

We can’t wait to give these cards, made with love, to those that we love.

 Other posts from Creative Play Central that you may like:

More great Valentine’s Day Card Ideas for Kids: