3 Easy and Simple Valentine’s Day Crafts

My husband’s birthday is the same week as Valentine’s Day so we usually celebrate his birthday more than Valentine’s Day.  I don’t even put up decorations, but this time I decided to try a few easy and simple Valentine’s Day crafts. 

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In an effort to continue to clean out my craft room supplies, I decided this year to actually make some Valentine’s Day crafts for my mantel.  This is not something I usually do, make Valentine’s Day craft nor decorate my mantel for the holiday.  But I figured it would be a short time frame for the holiday decorations and something new and fun to do.  So looking through the stash of stuff in my craft room, I came up with 3 easy and simple Valentine’s Day crafts I could complete in just a day or two.

One of the things I have plenty of is glass jars, and I am especially prone to hoarding collecting mason jars of all sorts and sizes.  I just love the character and versatility of using mason jars for storage and décor.  I even have an entire Pinterest board dedicated to Mason Jar Crafts I Love.  Making some painted mason jars for floral decorations was an easy decision for one of my 3 easy and simply craft ideas for Valentine’s Day.

 

I could have easily painted the mason jars in red for the holiday but that just seemed too much like Christmas.  Instead I decided to go with white and a soft pink color called Cameo Pink by Apple Barrel® in acrylic paints.

About a year ago, I purchased this penny copper colored metallic paint from Target called New Penny just because I couldn’t resist the color. Ever since then I have been looking for projects to use it on.  These mason jar vases for Valentine’s Day seemed to be the perfect fit with the color scheme on the bundles of flowers I purchased from Michael’s that have soft bronze colored and light pink petals in the floral mix.

 

Painted mason jar vases are easy and inexpensive to make.

First thing I did to paint the mason jars was to apply a layer of matte finish Mod Podge on the outside of each jar.  The Mod Podge helps to make the acrylic paint stick to the jar better than anything else I have tried.  Then I applied two to three coats of acrylic paint to fully cover the outside of the jar.

Then next step included taping off the layer half of each jar with painter’s tape, measured and compared against each other beforehand of course, and then two layers of the penny copper color was applied to the bottom half of each jar.

 

 

Getting the painter’s tape even all the way around the mason jar is always a challenge so after removing the painter’s tape, I had to do some touch-up painting and even out the paint lines too.

Once I let the paint dry for a day, I tied a small loop of jute twine around the mouth of the jar and inserted the floral bouquets for each jar.

Painted mason jar Valentine’s Day Decor

 

The second and third projects in my trio of easy and simple Valentine’s Day projects is a couple of aged deck boards with a jute twine heart and a custom saying of “I heart us”.

 

 

I just can’t seem to throw out old wood pieces, even after we updated our deck a few years ago, so of course I have several pieces of aged and worn deck boards in my craft stash.  All cut to different sizes depending on what we needed to cut them down for.  One such piece was this small 6 inch by 6 inch board.

 

 

Upcycled old deck board custom signs for Valentine’s Day Crafts

As you can see it still have the weathered look from being outside for many years, and even the old nail holes from the deck.

The first thing I did was to clean it up of course.  Then I applied a layer of the same soft pink color on one side.

To make the heart, I needed something to wrap the twine around to form the heart shape.  I figured this out by using a piece of pipe cleaner in my craft stash and bending it in the shape of a heart.

Being careful not to burn my fingers, I attached the end of a cut strip of jute twine to the pipe cleaner with hot glue.

Hint:  I usually have a bamboo skewer handy to help with using hot glue so that I don’t take a chance of getting it on my fingers.

Keeping a tight pull on the twine, I then wrapped the twine around the shape of the pipe cleaner heart until it was fully wrapped, again, securing it several times throughout the process with hot glue.

 

 

 

 

The last step was to glue the twine wrapped heart shape to the weathered and painted old deck board.

 

 

 

The third Valentine’s Day craft I made for this project was very similar to the second one, in that I reused an old deck board and created a custom twine wrapped lettered sign.

This time I used basic white acrylic paint as the backdrop color for the sign.

To get the heart shape and letters the correct size for the sign, I first created the graphics on my computer as a template and printed it out.  The heart shape was used as a template to draw the shape on the wood and painted in with the penny copper paint. 

 

I used the lettering for “I heart US” as a template only for bending and twisting the pipe cleaners to the right shape and size.  Using the same technique as before with the twine wrapped heart shape, I wrapped each letter tightly in jute twine and attached it to the painted weathered board with hot glue.

 

 

 

 

 

At least two of the three easy and simple Valentine’s Day crafts are on display on my Valentine’s Day themed mantel for the holiday.

Valentine’s Day Themed Mantel

 

 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

1 John 4:10 “This is love; not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”