Monday, January 14, 2013

DIY Valentine's Gifts

I never posted the Valentine's gifts I made last year so in case you are looking for ideas here is what we did:
I made some salt dough (play dough) for my first grade class that I go into.  I dyed it red and I rolled it out.  Using a cookie cutter I cut it into heart shapes.  I put one heart into a snack size baggie (there was room that I could have put two in each bag) and stapled a Valentine's Topper over the zipper of the bag:
Actually, I cut out a topper out of cardstock, folded it over the bag, stapled.  Then printed off the saying onto regular paper and used a tape runner to place it over the cardstock.  That way you don't see any staples.

My youngest gave out hugs and kisses:
First I took some Valentine kisses and wrapped them in red saran wrap and tied it with valentine ribbon (don't cut the ribbon yet):
Slide on the tag:
And tie it around a Hug barrel drink (I bought them at Walmart):
Slide in the straw, trim your ribbon and you have a gift of Hugs and Kisses!

If you have the mini zip top bags that you can find in the craft store you can use thoseYou can use those two ways: 1- fill with hugs and kisses OR 2- fill with kisses and attach to a hugs barrel drink (like above).  These are cute, but I didn't have enough left for the whole class.  I made these the same way as the dough. 
 
Last year owls were all the range and I incorporated them into my son's Valentine's.  His class didn't really do an exchange, but we made some anyway.  I had come across a great deal on scented pencils (a bucket of them) over the summer and bought them.  My kids loved them so I knew the 5th graders would too.  I used my cricut to cut out owl shapes (you could use clip art).  I had two ideas:



We ended up using the first one (click on the pictures to enlarge).  I cut out the owls and then printed the saying on labels and stuck them on the back.  We taped on the pencil towards the bottom - we wanted it to be like a branch.  The second idea was shaped more like a traditional valentine with the saying at the top and a branch at the bottom.  I cut slits into the paper to slide the pencil in on the branch.  Here is a close up of the saying - he didn't want it lovey dovey, he is a 10 year old boy (you could use valentine instead of friend, but he chose friend):



If you still need ideas check out this post for fun saying/tags or the post from the year before here.  You can view instructions/download tags for:




 

You could also use mini flashlights or glow sticks for this tag.


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