Valentines gifts - A bookmark and ILove made by kids

My kids are growing up to a point where they can do their own valentine craft ideas for their friends and teachers. I'm teaching them to make something creative for their friends.

A Bookmark - My daughter who is 4 years old, crafted bookmark with Popsicle stick, foam heart stickers and bead stickers. It was easy for her to do this without my help. The heart stickers (foam) come in 3 different sizes so she put the big on the top, little big in the middle and the tiny one as the third. In between the spaces of the hearts, she chose 2 bead stickers (which I use for my other projects with kids) and pasted them. At the back she wrote "For my friend" and in the front her name. She gave the bookmark, along with a pencil and valentine cards and sticker all wrapped inside a treat bag.

ILove - My son who is 7 years old wanted him to craft something with the candy as they exchange cards and candies for valentines. So instead of giving just card and candy we picked up this idea from a website. It was easy for him to attempt this one with little help. From a target store, we bought conversational candy boxes. He wrapped the candy box in red card stock. Then I had downloaded the ILove valentine play list and the menu dial and he cut them out and pasted them on the red card stock. Then we went and bought strings from Micheal's (thin wool) and pasted them to the candy box and the other ends to Hershey's kisses milk chocolate (as the ear piece). Turned out to be a cool idea.

For the teachers of both my kids we did the same ILove but attached a gift card. First we wanted put the gift card inside the ILove box, but in the end decided to paste with a tape to the ILove box at the back. All the teachers came personally to us not only thanked us but really liked the cool gift ideas.

A cake made with paper clay and a terracotta pot

This is one unique gift which I made for a friend for her 40th birthday ! 2 things which I made, one is painted a terracotta pot decorated with beads, then another one is a cake made with paper clay as this can stay longer ! Placed the paper clay cake inside the terracotta pot and covered it with a use and throw glass. So when she lifts the glass you will see the cake for a surprise. This was decided last minute the reason being it will be a nice surprise (no one will expect a cake inside a pot) for a 40th surprise birthday party !

Paper clay cake - I wanted to make something unique and since I'm not into baking cake (even though I like to decorate one) so decided to give a try to this idea of making a cake with clay and then paint and decorate it.

This is a 4 tier cake (4 for representing 40 one for each 10 years) - the 3 tier cake is made with paper clay and the last top layer is actually a gift button (made in plastic) representing the top layer of the cake. With the button packet I also got 4 balloons (made with plastic) so I glued them to toothpick and made them stand on the cake (for decoration). The bottom layer of the clay I glued 4 designs which are made of plastic. Painted the lower layer of the cake blue. The middle layer of the cake I had made some designs in the clay so painted with pink and purple and pink on the top. The 3rd layer I had painted the cake orange. Then I glazed the cake with the shiny glaze . I had to glue the 3 pieces as they did not stick on top of each other very well. Then glued the top 4th plastic gift cake as the top layer. I made round balls and painted them with metallic silver and glued them to the 3rd layer (not shown in this photo) of the cake as decorations.


TerraCotta Pot - Painted the clay with green metallic paint and the rim with golden metallic paint. This is the first time I've tried with metallic paint. Then I bought these beads which can be glued and did a simple flower design with those beads. The color of the beads were silver and golden , so I alternated the flowers with alternate colors. 4 flowers below and 4 flowers on the top (below the rim of the pot). Then wrote happy birthday in the middle with golden paint.