This Valentine’s Day, love bugs are a great project for the little ones in your life. Plus, you get to recycle! Kids can practice their tracing and cutting skills as they make the heart wings for their love bugs. For the real young ones, parents can provide pre-cut hearts, available right now in the seasonal craft section of your favorite retail store.
- Toilet paper tubes or paper towel cardboard tubes. You can experiment with different heights.
- Acrylic paint in pink, red, purple or any color you choose.
- Paint brushes
- Scissors
- Glue or hot glue
- Foam craft sheets in pink, red, purple or any color you choose.
- Pipe cleaners
- Googly eyes
- Pom poms
- Masking tape
- Sharpie
1. Find some cardboard craft tubes. You can recycle your cardboard toilet paper roll or paper towel roll tubes, which we did here, or order them on Amazon.
2. Paint the cardboard tubes any color you would like and let dry. This will be the base/body of the bug. Here, I chose to use Valentine’s-themed colors.
3. Trace and cut out heart shapes for the wings. I drew and cut out a heart that I then used as my template for the other wings. If you are not as confident with your drawing skills, you can always find a heart image online, then print and use that as your template.
4. Glue your heart wings to your cardboard roll and let dry.
5. Glue your googly eyes on, and affix pipe cleaners for the legs and antennae. If the glue is giving you trouble with this step, you can use masking tape (I happened to have some red masking tape on hand). Have fun making silly faces with a sharpie and curl your antennae. Add some more paint or sharpie to the body of your love bugs to give them some personality. Once the glue is dry, your love bug is ready!
