Sparkly Heart-Shaped Wands

Sparkly Heart-Shaped Wands | Mama.Papa.Bubba.

In addition to our annual Valentine’s Day tea, Gracen and I have a couple of other Valentine’s parties and classes to attend this year.  And since we don’t do the whole candy thing just yet, it means getting a little bit more creative with the ‘treats’ she hands out.  When I asked her what she’d like to give her friends, she responded with Valentine’s slime (thanks I’m sure to our Halloween version for her ballet class friends) and heart wands (thanks to a Kiwi Crate package we received from our most recent PBK story time).  And because both take a little bit of prep work, we started early…  More time left over to figure out what we’ll bring for the 30+ kiddos in her Strong Start class, right?

These little wands are beautiful and easy to make, and although some may think they’re a little ‘girly’, we believe that hearts and magic are for everyone. ☺

Heart Wand Materials

Here are the materials we used for the project…  Wooden dowels, adhesive glitter foam sheets, acrylic paint, a paint brush, and some ribbon.  The best part is that we picked up all of these things at our local dollar store, so not only were they inexpensive, but we only had to make one stop – always nice with a toddler in tow.

IMG 4891

First off, we started the project by painting our wooden dowels.  Miss G does not always enjoy having her hands covered in paint, so we attached clothespins to the ends of the dowels so she could rotate them as she painted without painting her fingers.  When she declared a dowel done, I went over the stick with a couple of quick strokes in order to smooth out the globs.

IMG 4896

Then, because the tips were not painted where the clothespins were, I was able to stick the dowels into chunks of {gingerbread} play dough to dry upright.

IMG 4995

A couple of days later, when our paint was good and dry (it actually only takes about an hour), we came back to our project.  We started by drawing a heart shape onto a piece of cardboard and cutting it out to use as a tracer.

IMG 4996

Next, using our newly-made tracer, we traced hearts onto the backs of our foam sheets.  Gracen was happy to do the first few, and let me do the others when it came to this job.

IMG 5000

With some strategic placement, we were able to fit 4 hearts onto each of our foam sheets, but of course it depends on the size of your tracer and the size of your foam sheets.

IMG 5004

Next, we cut out the hearts.

IMG 5005

Now to actually assemble a wand, you need two foam hearts, a wooden dowel, and a cute little helper.

IMG 5007

This right here was Grae’s favourite part of the whole project… Peeling the backings off of the hearts!

IMG 5009

With one heart shaped peeled, we placed the sticky side up on our work surface and placed the unfinished end of our dowel in the centre of the heart, up maybe an inch or inch and a half from the bottom.

IMG 5012

Then Grae peeled the backing off of another heart, and we carefully placed it on top of the dowel, making sure to line up the hearts as closely as we could.

IMG 5013

With the heart in a good position, Grae pressed everything together firmly.

IMG 5017

Next up – the ribbon!  We chose 3 colours, looped them in half, and cut them slightly shorter than the length of our exposed dowel .

IMG 5018

Then we stacked them up and tied them onto the dowel at the base of the heart, giving them a little tug to coax them into falling downwards nicely.

IMG 5026

Then, with a different, slightly narrower ribbon, we tied a bow right above the previous ribbon knot…

IMG 5024

And finished off all of the ribbon ends with v snips.

IMG_5027

IMG 5445

IMG 5446

IMG 5447
And there you have it.  Sparkly heart-shaped wands for Miss G’s little friends.

Keep up with all the Mama.Papa.Bubba. fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here. 

 

8 thoughts on “Sparkly Heart-Shaped Wands

    1. Oh really? Ours must be an extra good one! It’s originally a Dollarama (and has all of the Dollarama signs, etc.), but they’ve recently started converting over to Dollar Tree bags, employee uniforms, etc. so I’m not quite sure which it is right now! I do know that there’s a Dollarama in Richmond we often visit and their craft section is very good. Do you guys have one on the north shore?

      1. Yes, I think you have an extra good one! There is one opening ‘soon’ (so the sign has read for the past few months) really close to us, so fingers crossed it’s as good as yours ;)

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.