Valentine Collage

Here is a Valentine Collage project that I did with grade 1 and 2 last year.

I was teaching them different painting techniques which we then turned into our collage. The leftover paper was then used to decorate their Valentine Mail Pockets. (essentially a big heart shaped envelope made from white posterboard)











Materials Required:


- white paper, can also use white fingerpaint paper
- black paper
- paint in valentine colors
- paintbrush
- bubble wrap
- old comb (you can also use cardboard cut like a comb for the same effect)
- splatter box
- gluestick
- pastels
- scissors




Paper #1 Bubblewrap Print


Take some bubblewrap and cut into squares suitable for small hands. Place some paint onto a plate. You can use liquid tempera or acrylic...whatever you have on hand....if using cake tempera, moisten the colors you want.


Take your bubble wrap, place into paint bubble side down and print onto the paper.




Paper #2 Combed


Paint your paper with paint. Fingerpaint paper works really well for this method. You want it to be fairly wet and thickly coated.



You can also mix some flour into your paint to get a thicker consistency just make sure you are using a heavy paper for this.





Before it dries take your comb and comb some patterns thru the paint. I just buy a few extra picks from the dollar store to have on hand. Picks seem to work the best due to the handle.



Paper #3 Splatter

Kids always love this technique. To minimize the mess have a splatter box...just a fair sized cardboard box with tall sides. If you can do this outside as well or just make sure you have a dropcloth set out around the box.

Take fairly thin paint and fling it on the paper with a paint brush, (see photos in this past post).

Use valentine colors and splatter quite extensively.


Let all the papers dry.




Cut a vase shape out of one of your papers and then start cutting hearts. Big ones, small ones, cut out ones. Place on your black paper to help figure out your design.



When happy with your design start gluing down with a glue stick. Now some kids may want to draw their stems out first before gluing....the only issue with that is to get them vary the stem sizes and lengths. You'd be surprised how many want to line them up like soldiers in perfect formation. Unfortunately that doesn't make a great bouquet.




Add stems and leaves. We used oil pastels as they show up the best on black paper. With older kids you may want to continue with the paper collage and have them cut stems and leaves out of green paper.

That's it. I am currently working on more valentine projects and hope to post them soon. As well we are almost finished our paper mache penguins. They have turned out better than expected and will be put on display in the school library. I hope to have pictures next week.

The Chinese Dragons turned out great and Grade 3 staged a Dragon Dance parade on Monday. I planned on posting a few pictures but they were so fast they all are a blur. I'll try to get some photos of the dragon puppets tomorrow.

see you next time

gail