Happy Hearts

I don't really do Valentines day as such, I've never really seen the need to go all out on one day. It's kind of wrong that a bunch of roses can cost $100 one day and $50 the next and I really don't need to feed my chocolate addiction any further. Having said that I love a good reason to do some celebratory crafting and why not teach my girls about giving and sharing while I'm at it, after all V day is certainly a good reminder to care for and appreciate our loved ones.

A few weeks ago we visited the Brighton Jetty Classic Sculptures by the Sea Sculpture exhibition on the foreshore at Brighton, Cabin453 had a free crafting sesion set up for kids on this particular day which the girls took part in, it involved decorating calico fish with textas and food colouring, it was a fantastic activity and one that I have been very keen to re-visit at home. So here it is, a borrowed idea, to make some happy hearts on a rainy day.

I started by roughly cutting some hearts of equal size out of white cotton drill and then sewing around the edge of two hearts on top of one another about 5mm in from the edge leaving a small gap at the top.

Miss D then filled the hearts with fibre fill via the little opening at the top (suprisingly she was faster at this than I often am, I suspect it's because her fingers are much smaller!). I then inserted a length of doubled over ribbon (seriously any length you like, it just depends how low you want it to hang)in to the opening and sewed the heart closed, completing the cleft at the top so the stitching emulated the cut heart shape.

Ta da! Blank canvases!

I then filled some containers with a little water and added food colouring to the depth of colour I desired.

The girls and I then went to town with the food colouring using cotton buds as applicators. The results were kind of tye-dye cool and it was an awesome activity for even 2 year old Miss M. Older kids might like to draw patterns with textas or pens first and then colour with food colouring to make the design a little more interesting.

The girls gave their Happy Hearts to their Daddy, along with handmade cards and drawings, when he got home from work tonight(I'm at work tomorrow night, and it was too hard for a 2 and 3 year old to keep it a secret until morning) it was gorgeous to see how proud they were. I can see so many other shapes coming in our future.