Valentine Heart Sun Catchers

Last Friday Ava had the day off school so we took it as an opportunity to do a little decorating for Valentine's Day. We made red and pink, sparkly heart shaped sun catchers for our windows. They are super simple to make but look really effective.

Here's a look at how we made our heart sun catchers...

What You'll Need

Construction paper

Tissue paper in two or three colors

Glitter

Contact paper

Start by cutting out the heart shape for the outside of the sun catcher. Fold a piece of construction paper in half and draw half of a heart. With the paper folded, cut out the half heart shape. This will give you a solid heart shape. To make it hollow cut out another heart shape about an inch in from the edge. I did this another two times to make smaller heart shapes as well.

Cut several strips of tissue paper in each color. Cut each strip into squares of varying sizes.

Cut a length of contact paper large enough to fit your heart shape twice. Peel the backing paper off half the length of contact paper and lay it on your work surface with the exposed sticky side facing up. To help keep the contact paper in place fold the edge over and stick it down onto the work surface.

Carefully place one of the heart shapes (or more if they fit) onto the contact paper and press down, making sure that the heart is completely stuck down.

Ok, that's all the boring prep work out of the way. Time for the kids to have fun and get creative!

Give your kids a pile of the tissue paper squares. It's handy to have these close by so they don't have to lean over the contact paper too much. All they have to do now is stick the pieces of tissue paper onto the contact paper within the heart shape. They can be as neat or as messy as they like. Overlapping the tissue paper and going over the edges of the heart is perfectly fine.

For extra sparkle, sprinkle on a little glitter. We used a few different sized glitters. Be careful not to use too much glitter, especially if the pieces are chunky. It may stop the contact paper from sticking down properly. We learned this the hard way!

Now for the tricky bit that's best left to an adult. Carefully remove the backing paper from the contact paper and smooth the contact paper over the top of the heart. The heart will now be sealed on both sides. If your kids used a lot of glitter (like mine did) you may have to spend a little time making sure that the contact paper is indeed stuck down smoothly. Otherwise you'll have glitter fall everywhere when you stick the heart up on your window!

Once the contact paper is smooth trim around the edges of the heart. Make sure to leave a tiny amount of overlap around heart (maybe a few millimetres) the so that you have contact paper sticking directly to contact paper. This should hold a little more securely, especially if you have a lot of glitter.
Once your heart is cut out it's time to stick it on the window and look at the beautiful colors as the sun shines through it.

These sun catchers can be made in any shape you like and are a great decoration to make for holidays, to welcome a new season, or just for fun. Lola has made pumpkin sun catchers at preschool a few times and she loves having them hanging on her bedroom window.

I can see shamrock sun catchers and Easter egg sun catchers coming in the near future!