Easy Valentine's Craft for Kids

I found this craft on Pinterest and thought it would be perfect for Children's Church as their craft project last week. You just need a magazine or catalog with colorful pictures, construction paper, glue stick and scissors. 

Fold construction paper in half and cut down the middle. This will give you 2 pieces about 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in size.

Lay one piece to the side and fold the other piece in 1/2 again.

On the folded piece, take a pen or pencil and draw 1/2 a heart and lay that piece to the side. 

Next tear some pages from your catalog or magazine with pretty pictures on the page. Cut the page so it is the same size as the construction paper 1/2.

You should cut more than one page so you can create the mosaic effect with different pictures. But they should all be the size of the 1/2 sheet construction paper.

Then start cutting your pages in strips about 1" - 1.5" wide. 

You should end up with some assorted picture strips. (Note: I pre-cut to this point for class because we have so many kids. But if you are doing this with your grandchildren, they will love cutting the strips and they don't have to be perfect.)

Next, pick a strip and get started. We didn't encourage them to do a pattern or anything. They just picked what they liked. Then you take a glue stick and run it down the back of your first strip.

Press it down on the edge of the paper. 

Continue the process of placing them side by side until the whole sheet is covered. If any were hanging over the edges we just trimmed them off.

Next, take your folded piece and cut along the outline of your 1/2 heart.

Lay it flat and smooth it down.

On the back side (where the pencil mark was) run your glue stick around all the outer edges and around the edges of the heart.

Lay it on top the magazine strips paper and press down all over to make sure it is nice and smooth.

And wah-lah! You have a cute little mosaic valentine. Some kids took them home as is for Mommy to frame.

Some wrote Happy Valentine's Day on them. And it being Children's Church we always have foam stickers on hand so some decorated with little foam hearts. 

Either way, they all were cute as could be. Each one was unique in its own way because we used so many different magazine pics to cut the scraps. The kids loved it.