family craft: valentine’s day tree with felt heart ornaments {full of love!}

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, we all have hearts on our minds. When I think of hearts, I think of love and when I think of love, there is nothing that represents that better than my family. So, this year, I had my crew help me make Felt Heart Pocket ornaments so we could hang them and tuck little notes of love from each other inside.

Originally when I was thinking about this craft, I thought I would have the kids cut branches and paint them. But we found once we made the felt ornaments, they looked just as pretty on the natural branches! So that meant it was one step easier.

To make these Felt Heart Pocket ornaments with your family, you will need felt and a sewing machine. If you’re not a sewer you can always glue the hearts to form a pocket with hot glue and add string or ribbon when you glue the seam for hanging.

Materials Needed:

For the Felt Heart Pocket Ornaments
Felt
Scissors
Sewing Machine and Thread
Small Branches (to stuff in a vase for your heart “tree”)

For the Love Notes
Small Pieces of Paper (we cut blank note cards into 4 pieces per note card)
Markers

How to Make Your Valentine’s Tree and Ornaments

Step 1
Cut out heart shapes from different colors of felt. You will need 2 hearts to form each pocket. As I am certain you know (but just in case!) to cut the shape of a heart out do this:

Fold the felt in half and cut the heart shape around the folded seam.

Pro Tip: To work faster, you can double-up the felt and cut out two hearts at the same time. But you will need good quality, sharp (adults only!) sewing scissors to do this.

Step 2
Have the kids sort all the hearts and stack like colors together. Actually, there are no rules here, you could even mix color combinations but be sure to have the kids help with the stacking. They enjoy being involved!

Step 3
Stack one heart on top of another. Run your sewing machine by pressing the peddle and tugging at the thread with nothing under your needle or pull the string with your hand to leave a long (at least 6 inch trail of string) before you begin sewing. You will do this so that at the end, after you’ve sewn your pocket, you can tie the two strings of thread together (on either side of the heart) to hang the ornament.

Begin sewing around one side of the ornament, all the way to the other, stopping leaving the top open so you can tuck things inside the pocket. Next, at the end on the other side, move your needle off of the felt heart and continue sewing to leave a long trail of thread on that end as well.

Step 4
Once you’ve finished sewing the felt heart pocket tie the thread on either side together to form the hanger for the ornament.

Step 5
Have the kids collect some bare tree branches from outside in an area where there are some trees. This time of year, when the branches are bare and the wind blows hard, small sized branches fall to the ground. Once collected, you can either paint the branches or leave them natural.

Step 6
Stuff the branches in a vase to form your tree and hang your ornaments on the tree.

Step 7
On tiny pieces of paper, have the whole family write love notes to one another and tuck them inside the pocket of each heart.

Now your tree is filled with love and you can have the happiest Valentine’s Day ever!

Author Description

caroline

Meet Caroline Urdaneta. She's a designer of creative family projects, crafter, tinkering painter, and mother of 4 children. Catch her work at Salsa Pie, which was started in 2009 to help foster an innovative spirit in her children. She writes about project ideas for the whole family and how to encourage creativity in kids.