DIY Paper Heart Chain For Valentine’s Day

My kids love to do crafts and so do I. Crafts are such a great way to spend time together using creativity, making something useful, and just having fun! This Valentine’s Day craft is for making your own paper strip heart garland which you can then use to decorate your classroom or home and get into the Valentine’s Day mood. I include step by step directions for the paper hearts as well as photos. I also share a video to show you how to make a paper heart chain.

Heart Paper Chain Craft Tutorial

This paper heart chain craft is fun for making vertical hanging decorations and you can embellish those with a final large heart. You can also use the paper heart chains to hang horizontally across doorways as more of a heart garland swag.

As an eco-friendly bonus, by making homemade Valentine’s Day garland, you can eliminate the packaging waste, use as many eco-friendly supplies as possible, and only make what you need.

Supplies:

• stapler
• ribbon or string
• scissors
• construction paper (or other thick paper such as scrapbook paper)
• hole punch
• markers
• ruler

How To Make A Paper Heart Chain

Take your construction paper and cut into shorter strips.  For example, if your construction paper measures 9″ by 12″, you can measure out and mark inch intervals up the long side of the page and you will end up with 12, 9 inch strips of paper.  You can use all one color paper or can even chose a mix of colors and make a rainbow heart paper chain.

The paper heart chains can be hung vertically or horizontally as more of a swag garland. First, I will give you directions for making paper heart chains meant to hang vertically. Then, if you want to hang them horizontally, all you will need to do is add more heart links to make your paper chain longer, and leave off the final larger heart shape decoration.

Vertical Paper Heart Garland Directions:

You can make your Valentine paper heart chain any length you want. However, I suggest you start with estimating about 10 paper strips per heart garland and then you can add a few extra or leave a few off if you want your garlands to be of varying sizes.

Cut a few 18 inch lengths of ribbons to hang your heart garlands from the ceiling.  

Now that you have your strips and ribbon ready, you can begin to create the garland. Take your first strip of paper and shaping it so that it almost makes a circle then push both ends into the circle so that they overlap and staple.  (Above photo.) Then fold bottom circular part to create a point for the bottom of the heart.  (Below photo)

That was the hardest part.  Next, fold each strip of paper in half and insert the bottom of the heart garland and staple.  (Photo below.)

Then fold down the two ends of the strip to create the bottom of the heart garland again.  You will repeat that process of adding another strip to the bottom of the heart garland, stapling, and creating another heart in the chain over and over for about 10 hearts.  There is a video below if you need any clarification on how to fold the hearts to make the paper chain links.

On the final heart link you can use a hole punch and a ribbon to attach a larger construction paper heart that your child has decorated with a marker and a fun Valentine’s Day message. These make really cute homemade paper heart decorations that you can customize with sweet messages and love sayings.

Conclusion

If you find it helpful, I also have included a video with a full tutorial on how to make paper heart chain below:

I hope you enjoy this fun paper Valentine’s Day craft and that your vertical heart garlands come in handy for decorating this Valentines Day. Do you think you will give this fun craft a try? How many heart paper chains will you make? 

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Creative Gift Ideas For Valentine’s Day