Valentine Mobile Tutorial

This is actually a variation on the decorations that I will be doing for my daughter's polka dot birthday party. The kids had so much fun making the decorations for the party, I thought it would be fun to do one for Valentines Day as well. This mobile can be made with any symmetrical shape (squares, hearts, circles, butterflies, diamonds, etc). It would also be a lot of fun made with recycled papers (old maps, old book pages, newspaper, magazines, etc). I can also see these as decorations at a family reunion with photos. My point? This project is very versatile and it was a great project for both my kids.

My oldest folded and glued the hearts together. My youngest matched three of each heart by size and color.

Materials:

• colored paper
• scissors
• glue (I found a glue stick to be best as regular white glue was a bit wet for the paper and tended to warp it a little)
• string
• pencil
• thicker paper for making a stencil

Step 1 - Cut a few different size heart shapes from the thicker paper for your pattern. It's easiest to make a symmetrical shape by folding the paper in half and cutting out just half the shape - in the case of the heart, it was a tear drop shape.

Step 2 - Fold the colored paper into thirds so that you can cut three of the same heart at a time.

Step 3 - Trace the hearts onto the colored paper using your heart stencils.

Step 4 - Cut out the circles. I cut the shapes rather than having my son do it because it involved cutting through three thicknesses of paper.

Step 5 - Fold three of the same size hearts in half.

Step 6 - Glue the three hearts together leaving the last one open to insert the hanging string.

Step 7 - Add a few more onto the same string and hang. I put ours on our dining room light, but you can tie them to a hoop (maybe a coffee lid with the center cut out).

For my daughter's party we are using all different colors, six different sizes of circles. I will be hanging the strands on the ceiling to make it a festive polka dot party. Photos will follow after the party on the 15th.