Have time for one more Valentine craft this week? It’s not too late to make a few special cards with your kids and send a little love to family and friends. These stenciled heart cards use simple materials you probably have on hand at home. Plus, your kiddos will love painting with some unusual tools, like bubble-wrap or plastic forks.

Supplies for Simple Stenciled Heart Cards:

• heavy paper for making heart stencils
• paper or cards to print on
• paint
• palettes or paper plates
• tools for making prints

Gather some printmaking tools, like sponge pieces, bubble wrap, toothbrushes, mesh produce bags, plastic forks, pencil erasers, cotton balls, or pieces of corrugated cardboard. Anything with texture is fun to experiment with for this project.

Cut a variety of heart shapes (or any other shape of your choice) from heavy paper. A recycled file folder works great! Choose your paint colors and spread a thin layer of each color on a paint palette or paper plate.

Now you’re ready to print! We liked having some scratch paper on hand for testing our prints and color combinations.

Place a paper heart on the front of your card. Hold it in place with one hand while printing all around the edge with your chosen tool. Continue dipping your tool in paint and printing around the stencil. You can even try “loading” your tool with two paint colors at a time.

Bubble-wrap taped to a block makes a great painting tool – it was my girls’ favorite to work with. The toothbrushes didn’t impress them, but the sponges worked well. The gold paint was definitely a hit, too!

This is one of those projects that begs to be repeated, so have lots of paper on hand. If you don’t want to make cards, create a mural on a big piece of paper. The heart stencils look quite pretty after being printed with a few times. Save those to glue onto another art project or card.

Add a few heartfelt messages and mail your cards to some special people, just in time for Valentine’s Day! Happy crafting!