With Valentine's Day fast approaching, I wanted a simple heart craft to do with my daughters that we could use for decorations all month long...#lazydecorator. As luck would have it, my oldest daughter had a snow day so we could all work on creating a newspaper heart banner together for our mantle with a few basic supplies that we had around the house.
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Supplies Needed for a Newspaper Heart Banner
Old Newspapers (mostly the black and white sections since the colored ink is harder to paint over)
Water in a cup
Heart Template to use as a tracer (if needed)
How to Assemble a Newspaper Heart Banner
First, I gave my girls laminated hearts to use as tracers. I've had these for a million years and I think inherited them from another teacher when I started teaching. I have no idea. Regardless, use a heart as a template if your little ones are too small to draw hearts. We used a crayon to trace the hearts onto the newspaper because we figured out it was easier to see on the newspaper than a pencil.
Next, we cut out all of the hearts that we had traced. I didn't really have a set number in mind. I just let them trace and cut. Then I realized we would need more to make the banner long enough, so I traced and cut a few more for them.
Then, we got out our watercolor paints and worked on painting our hearts shades of pink and red. To do this, we just used the red paint with different amounts of water to make it look more pink. My older daughter had a pink in her set of watercolors. The rest of the shades we made with red.
Then I let them dry overnight. I noticed a few were starting to curl as they dried, so I set them under a heavy book so they would dry flat. Then I laid the hearts out on the table upside down and set the ribbon across them. You'll note in these pictures I used yarn at first. When I went to hang the banner it was too twisty with the yarn and all the hearts weren't facing the right way so I went back and used flat curling ribbon. I used a piece of tape on the back of each heart.
Make sure to leave enough ribbon on the edges so that you can tie your banner. I have nails hidden on the back of my mantle so I made sure there was enough space to tie the ribbon and have the first heart hanging in the correct place.
Voila! There you have it. An easy newspaper heart banner that is perfect for decorating in February. Another alternative to hanging it horizontally like a banner would be to make them hang vertically and then hang in from a doorway or maybe at the ends of a mantle.
