Suncatcher Valentines

With Valentine’s Day in just a few days, I wanted to get the girls’ valentines figured out this past weekend. They go to a school where valentines need to be homemade, if they are brought in. After talking with my first grader, we decided to make some suncatchers by dripping candle wax onto a clear sheet of adhesive paper. My fifth grader walked in while we were doing this and immediately wanted in on the action. She, however, decided she was going to turn hers into bookmarks. 

This is how they turned out. 

Disclaimer: This is not a project for children to do on their own as a lit candle is used. Parents will need to do this part. All precautions with an open flame should be taken.

Supplies you will need:

Suncatcher

• Clear adhesive paper. We used Avery Clear Full Sheet Labels
• Assortment of different colored candles and matches or lighter 
• Scissors
• Heart pattern to trace for the suncatcher part (we used a punch to create our heart pattern similar to this one) or heart shaped cookie cutter to trace (see below to print off a heart pattern)
• Heart pattern to trace or punch to create the heart for your name (we used one similar to this)
• Pencil for tracing
• Pen or marker for writing name 
• Yarn for hanging
• Arrow punch (we used one similar to this)
• Embroidery needle with large eye 
• Card stock in desired colors for name heart and arrow
• Cardboard

Bookmark

• Clear adhesive paper. We used Avery Clear Full Sheet Labels
• Assortment of different colored candles and matches or lighter 
• Scissors
• Ruler or plain sheet of paper to fold and use as a guide
• Pencil for marking bookmark edges
• Pen or marker for writing name
• Border punch
• Glue
• Card stock in desired color for border
• Cardboard

For both projects, you begin the same way.

Place a piece of cardboard down first to protect your table and then peel off the back of the adhesive paper. Place the paper sticky side up on the cardboard. Then light a candle and drip the wax over the paper (Parents need to do this part, as it deals with an open flame.) Once drops of one color are spread out over the paper, blow the candle out and use another one. After the paper is covered fairly evenly with different colors of wax, you are done with the candles. Now, peel off the backing from a second sheet of adhesive paper and put it over the first sheet to seal the wax in between the two pieces. Then rub the papers together to get them to stick all around the wax drips (my girls did this part). 

For the suncatchers, trace the hearts on the paper using either your punched-out pattern or cookie cutter. (I was able to get twenty hearts on one sheet.) Then cut the hearts out (this is where I handed the project off to my first grader, who then got busy cutting her hearts out while my fifth grader’s wax sheet was made.)

For the bookmarks, take a sheet of paper and fold it in half. Use this as a guide to draw a line across the middle of the wax sheet with a pencil. Then fold the paper into fifths (it took me a few times to get this right) and use this to draw the lines creating each book mark. You can use a ruler for this if you want. Then cut out the ten bookmarks.

Embellish the suncatchers and bookmarks as you see fit.

What we did: 

I have a lot of hole punches for scrapbooking and we found an arrow one and a smaller heart to use for the suncatchers. My fifth grader picked out a boarder punch for the edges of her bookmarks. After all the punches were made, the assembly began.

My first grader cut the arrows in half and I carefully peeled apart the edges on each side of the hearts to insert the two arrow halves. She then wrote her name on the smaller hearts and they were then threaded onto the string that was put through the suncatchers with a needle for hanging. We knotted above and below the name heart to keep it up above the suncatcher. Voila!

For the bookmarks, the boarder was glued onto the edge on the front and back of the bookmark, so each side looks the same. My fifth grader wrote her name extremely small in one of the hearts on the boarder. Again, voila!

If making these with smaller children or you would prefer not to use candles, you can use small pieces of tissue paper to cover the adhesive paper instead of dripped wax. I thought about doing this from the start but did not have any in Valentine’s Day colors so went with the candle idea instead. 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

And

Happy crafting!