Babysitting can be hard. But it can also be really fun, and you can learn a lot!
My mom babysits for a friend sometimes, and 4-year-old Katie is a total joy.
Katie loves to do crafts and art. She’ll scribble with her markers all day long, unless she’s building lego towers or tearing up craft paper! Her adorable smile brings joy to my heart, and the other day she sparked a whole new idea…
I came home from work and my mom was helping Katie with a new craft project. Rainbow colors were all over the table, and at first I didn’t see what exactly they were working on. But when I did, I immediately thought I want one of those! That’s so fun!
What was the project, you ask?
Hearts.
Simple paper hearts that were absolutely lovely!
My mom and Katie were making rainbow hearts, but today I’ll be showing you the steps to make your own in blue. My whole desk area is brown and blue/turquoise, so I picked blue as the theme for my own hearts.
Yes, I actually did the Children’s Craft for myself. But I promise, it’s wonderful, lovely and complicated to do it as a teen or adult as well! I love my hearts, and I hope you do, too. 😊
My first step is to pick out the colors I want. I just recently got a pack of pastel card-stock, so I took all the blueish colors in that pad plus a white, ending up with four colors. Any more than that would get hard to handle and stick together, so I recommend sticking to four or five for you project. 😄
I stacked the colors in shade order, going from darkest to lightest (NOTE: keep the papers stacked this way through the whole project so they don’t get messed up!).
Then I cut strips with this handy cutter-thing (I don’t know what it’s called… 🤭). I stuck to around 1/2″ wide or less, but you can do wider. I think for Katie’s project they cut 1″ strips. I cut all four pieces at the same time!
I cut four strip groups, setting each apart so they didn’t get mixed up. 
Then, taking my first one, I laid it beside a ruler and dropped each descending piece down a 1″ until I got to the bottom piece (in this case, the darkest blue).
Carefully keeping them stacked in this order, I turned the whole stack over and cut the opposite ends off at the dark blue one (does that make sense? Probably not… Basically I cut the three ‘top’ pieces to the length of the bottom piece. I don’t think that explains it much better though… 😟)
It should end up with the bottom (in my case, the darkest blue) piece being longer than the rest, the ones in front getting slightly shorter until you get to the front piece.
For the next step, I held the ends tightly and folded each piece over to touch the bottom, starting with the shortest and ending with the longest. Then I stapled all the ends together (this is why sticking to four or five colors is best, since it would get hard to staple together). It should look something like this: 
That’s one half of your heart. Repeat for the other side.
The next step is to find a ribbon for your project (if you want it to hang. If not, skip this step). I used a sparkly blue ribbon I had on hand, about 1/2″ wide.
Run some glue up one side of each half of the heart, then stick them together with the ribbon in between. Use clothespins or paper clips to hold it together until it dries!
That’s it! It’s pretty simple, but the results are stunning. In my case, I made three hearts and stuck them all onto my ribbon in size order. 😁
One additional touch is to use washi tape or an extra strip of paper to cover the staples on the bottom, which I did. This just adds a certain degree of style to the project!
How did you like the project? Have you done something similar before, and how did it turn out?
Let me know in the comments!
God bless,
Janet💙