Stuffed Hearts

These little stuffed hearts are a nifty little Valentine craft. Kids love them, you can make them simple or more complicated, they are made out of recycled materials, and they are just plain fun.

What You'll Need:

• Lunch sized paper bag
• Newspaper
• Red acrylic paint
• Scissors
• Stapler
• Paint brush

What to Do:

1. Cut out two identical hearts from the paper bag.

The way we did it was to cut the bottom of the bag off, and then cut down one side to make a large sheet. Then we cut the paper in half, put the two halves together and folded them in half. This way we could cut two identical hearts at the same time by cutting a half heart on the fold.

2. Put the two hearts together and staple all the way around them, leaving a three inch (more or less) space open on one side. This will make a little pocket.

The staples should line up close together about a quarter of an inch from the edge of the paper. This doesn't have to be exact, but it looks better when it's pretty uniform.

3. Crumple up pieces of newspaper and put them through the hole you left in the staples. Do this until the heart is as stuffed as you want it to be. When you're satisfied, staple the hole closed.

4. Paint both sides of your stuffed heart with red acrylic paint. You may want to paint one side, let it dry, then paint the other to make it less messy.

Variations:

There are a lot of things you can do to this basic craft to make it more pretty or useful...

• Write a love note on it and present it to your special Valentine.

• Dip your hand in white paint and stamp your handprint on the heart.

• Decorate the heart with other objects like buttons, beads, glitter, gems, paper, etc.

• Staple in a piece of yarn when you're joining the two hearts to make a hanger.