How to make a glittery 3D Heart for Valentine’s Day

If you are looking for a great Valentine’s Day Craft, we’ve got it. This beautiful 3-D heart is easy to make from soggy kitchen towels and it’s especially fun if you like messy projects.

Last week as we were standing in our kitchen, looking at the soaked paper towels after a Chromatography experiment, and wondering, What else can we do with it?

We decided to put the paper towels in a blender with some water just to see what will happen. The resulting mushy substance proved to be incredibly fun to touch, squeeze, and mold. We pressed it into a heart cookie cutter and ended up with a beautiful 3-D heart.

The second time around we eliminated the blender and had, even more, fun mashing things with hands. If your kids enjoy sticking their hands in gooey messes, as much as my kids, they will definitely enjoy making this Valentine’s Day 3D Heart.

No doubt about it, this experiment turned out to be a fun (and educational). And we’re making these 3-D hearts for all our friends for Valentine’s Day this year!

How to make a glittery 3D Heart for Valentine’s Day

What you need

Kitchen paper towels

Red food coloring

Heart cookie cutter

Water

String and something to make a hole for the string (optional)

Mod Podge, glitter glue or glittery nail polish for decoration (optional)

What to do

1. Tear a paper towel in small pieces and soak it in water for a few seconds. It might be a lot of fun for you to squeeze and mash it with your bare hands.
2. Add food coloring.
3. Pick up the gooey mess that used to be a paper towel and press inside the cookie cutter. You can use bare hands or now that the towel is colored you might prefer a fork. NOTE: You can use a cookie cutter of almost any kind, except the ones with very narrow parts. We tried to make a ballerina, but it was hard to press enough paper towel inside her long arms and legs to make it work.
4. Squeeze the excess water out. If you don’t want to get food coloring on your hands, you can wear gloves or press down with a small spoon.
5. If you are planning to hang your 3-D heart, make a hole for the string while the heart is still wet. We used a knitting needle but anything sharp will work.
6. Let it dry overnight.

(Optional) If you prefer to have a smoother surface, you can cover the heart with Mod Podge to even out the lumps.

But most of my kids didn’t want their hearts to be smooth since the rough bumps are so very good for catching glitter (if you decide to use some, I recommend glitter glue or sparkly nail polish).

We will definitely use this same method for creating some Christmas decorations next year. (Update: we did and it was definitely one of our successful ideas).

We started our day with chromatography, the science of separating molecules, and ended with big red hearts. That was not what we expected, but we fell in love with these hearts and now we have one of a kind gift for our friends on Valentine’s Day.

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