Secret Valentine's Messages & Twirling Hearts
This Valentine's Craft Idea is less of a craft tutorial and more of a sharing of an idea... an idea of how to share secrets! My kids have grown to love Valentine's Day over the years, with little tokens shared amongst the family, but I realised that they knew nothing about the tradition of anonymous notes! Now that they're older we're going to take things up a level, and wax-resist painting gives us the perfect opportunity to marry this excitement to a beautiful craft.
We are going to make beautiful cards where the recipients gets to reveal their Valentine's message themselves with watercolour paints. You will need: Watercolour Paper and/or a Notecard Set, White Crayon, Watercolour Paints, Paintbrushes
1. Take a white wax crayon and draw with it on a piece of watercolour paper. (There was no point taking a photo of this as you wouldn't have been able to see anything, but that's the whole point... it's a SECRET!).
You can draw straight onto pre-cut cards if you wish but I always feel like if you're going to get the paints out you should really go for it, especially with watercolours as they're so dreamy...
As you can see from the 'what you'll need' pic, we used the Stockmar watercolours in Carmine and Vermilion Red and Ultramarine Blue. The Vermilion looks orange in the dish but goes onto the paper as a strong red, with the Carmine being deeper and softer. I mixed up some of my own pink and lilac, (using a squeeze of white from a tube I had), but realised after that I hadn't needed to - just mix more water into the red for a pink effect, and you can also enjoy the blending of the paints on the paper for lilac or purple, even without it being wet-on-wet.
2. Enjoy revealing all of your Valentine's doodles to yourself, because even you won't realise what you've done until the paint reveals it!
Your paper may start to curl up once you've painted on it, to flatten it out just dab it dry with some tissue or kitchen roll and then pop it between some books, perhaps with some greaseproof paper on top.
3. We cut our painting into heart shapes to use as alternatively shaped cards, and they'll also be so pretty to use for hanging decorations.
4. Here comes the fun bit! Write your message onto the back of your card and give it to your Valentine, for them to reveal the message themselves!
We also used one of the recycled card sets for more traditional style cards and they were just lovely to work with. The paint goes on beautifully, and I love that you can see the grain of the paper through the watercolour.
You can choose as to whether you put the paint on the front of the card yourself or if your valentine does all the painting.
Will you be brave enough to put your name?!
We will be giving cards like this to all our loved ones this year, along with some paints and a brush, to spark some creativity, and also some love!
Twirling Hearts
Now, what to do with all the beautiful wax-resist paintings you found yourself dreamily making, if you've run out of people to write notes to?! Make them a twirling heart, of course! Check out our reels for inspiration:
