5 Eco-friendly Crafts & Valentine’s Day Decorations For Your Home
It’s almost February, so break out the hearts and love! We’ve rounded up five eco-friendly crafts and Valentine’s Day decorations for your home. From garlands to homemade art prints, keep the house festive give a few of these a try!
Updated 1/26/2024
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The holiday season feels like it ends after the New Year sometimes, but it doesn’t have to! We were never big into Valentine’s Day decorating or crafting prior to the pandemic life, but everyone is spending a lot more time at home lately, and we want to carry over some of the festive feels from the holidays. So time to do a little DIY crafting and activities for Valentine’s Day or really the entire month of February!
As always, we strive to create crafts and decor that are a little more eco-friendly by keeping plastic-free, finding supplies in nature, and composting/recycling it when we’re done (or store it for next year!).
Eco-friendly Crafts & Valentine’s Day Decorations For Your Home
Supplies for All Valentine’s Day Crafts + Decor
- Watercolors
- Paint brushes
- Construction Paper
- Plant-Based Liquid Glue
- Hot Glue
- Drill with drill bits
- Frame
- Salt
- All-Purpose Flour
- Vegetable Oil
- Cream of Tartar
- Food Coloring/Natural Dye
- Twigs or Sticks
We personally try to use up all our existing art supplies before purchasing more eco-friendly supplies. It’s always best to use up what you have before buying new eco-friendly products.
Now onto the eco-friendly crafts and Valentine’s Day decorations for your home!
1. Thumbprint Hearts Art Print
As parents, many of us like to have little reminders of our little one’s hand at a certain age. But those handprint crafts are sometimes only good enough to hang on the fridge for a while (not the prettiest decor item!). Well, why not make a cute heart art print with your kid’s thumbs to use for decor whenever February comes around?! Follow these simple steps for a cute eco-friendly Valentine’s Day craft and decoration.
Materials: Paint, Paper, Paint Brush, Scissors (if needed), Measuring Tape, Pencil, Frame
- Gather supplies and cut paper to size of the art print desired if needed.
- Optional – Mark out the hearts’ centerpoints for desired pattern to act as a guideline for you and your child.
- Lightly paint your kid’s thumb with the color of choice (red, pink, orange)
- Have your child light press their thumb at a diagonal in one direction (assist if needed for toddlers/young children)
- Then press the thumb diagonally in the opposite direction overlapping at the base.
- Repeat this process until you’ve filled up your paper and created the desired design
FYI, this one will take a little patience and possibly two parents to achieve if doing this with a toddler or young child. Or you can even cheat by making one thumbprint heart with your toddler, take a picture and insert into a black document on the computer, copy it around, then hit print! Up to you!
Eco Tip: Either use a frame you already have by just covering up the picture previously in there or go thrifting and get a second-hand frame that’s super cool! Way better eco-friendly choice.
2. Twig Hearts
Seriously, if you don’t know already, I LOVE collecting sticks/twig and then making them into decor items. So let’s make some lovely twig hearts as Valentine’s Day decorations for your home using Nature for art supplies.
Materials: Assortment of twigs, Twine, Hot glue, Scissors
- Set out all your twigs and sticks and trim to specific lengths creating a heart shape.
- If you have a hard time visualizing the lengths needed, print out some heart shapes to the desired size to use as a template
- Cut a piece of twine the length needed to go around the heart’s perimeter
- Run hot glue along the heart’s perimeter and place twine to help hold the sticks together.
- Trim any twine if needed
- Repeat to make as many twig hearts as desired!
Use extra twine at the top to make a loop to hang from or string a bunch together to make a garland. Then use as a beautiful, eco-friendly Valentine’s Day decoration for your home!
Take your kid or toddler on a nature walk to collect “art supplies” for this Valentine’s Day craft and decoration. It’s a great way to spend time outdoors with them and usually fairly easy to find sticks in the winter months!
3. Watercolor Wood Heart Garland
A simple wooden heart garland is a super simple eco-friendly Valentine’s Day craft to use as home decor. If you have your kids paint them, I think they turn out even better! When toddlers paint them, the hearts take on this tie dye and gradient look because toddlers are not scared to mix colors!
Materials: Watercolors, Cotton Twine, 1.5″ Wooden Hearts, Drill, Water
- Gather your supplies and begin by drilling small holes in each heart. Stack multiple hearts and drill a hole on each side of the heart. Drilling two holes allows for the heart to lay flat when hanging.
- If you’re lucky to find the correct sized wooden hearts with pre-drill holes, then great, use those!
- If you don’t want to drill holes, you can always hot glue them to the twine.
- Get some water and the watercolors, and start painting away with each heart.
- The example garland used red, orange, and yellow to create the gradients. However, a monochrome red colored hearts would be beautiful as well.
- String together. Use a large needle to help thread the twine if it’s hard to get through the holes.
- Space out the hearts how you want and hang up the garland!
Watercolors work the best for this garland craft as it allows for the wood grains to still show . Also, watercolors are not quite as bold as heavier acrylic paint, so the overall effect is lighter and more natural.
Tip: When using watercolor palettes with kids, cover up or tape off the colors that don’t match the Valentine’s Day color theme (aka blue, purple, green, etc). This allows you to keep with the color scheme and less hovering/stress as a parent having to constantly remind them to use the warm color tones!
4. Salty Hearts Collage
Do you have some salt, glue, and paper at home? Well, you can easily make some simple Valentine’s Day decorations for your home with these materials. Salty hearts make a great eco-friendly alternative to plastic glitter and gives you a fun texture, too. This is a great craft to do with kids that can turn out quite beautiful!
Materials: Salt, Liquid Glue, Construction Paper, Empty Shaker (optional)
- Measure and cut squares to size out of construction paper to fit into desired frame.
- Take a piece of construction paper and create a heart pattern with glue.
- Place the paper in a bin and have your kid shake salt all over it.
- Pick up one corner of the paper and shake off excess salt.
- Optional: Funnel leftover salt into an empty shaker to use and repeat this craft!
- Arrange into a collage pattern and glue edges together (you can also glue to another piece of paper for stability).
- Put into a frame and you have a cute decoration!
Make several of these salty hearts to create a variety of Valentine’s Day decorations for your home. You can also punch a hole in the paper and string them together for a garland instead of making a collage. Both are fun and beautiful ways to display your salty hearts! My little one loves Mickey Mouse right now, so we added one in for fun!
Eco Tip: Pour some salt into an empty spice shaker, so your little one doesn’t use ALL the salt. This also allows you to use a funnel and refill the shaker with the leftover salt that didn’t stick to the glue! Saves you salt!
5. Heart Homemade Playdough
Playdough is one of the best activities and crafts to do any time of the year. So why not put a festive spin on it for February? Make some homemade playdough paired with a heart theme, and tada, you are all set!
Materials: 2 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour, 2 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil, 1/2 Cup of Salt, 2 Tablespoons Cream of Tartar, 1 cup Boiling Water, Food Coloring or Natural Dye
- Mix flour, cream of tartar, salt, and oil into a large mixing bowl
- Boil water and add a couple drops of red food coloring (little or much as you desire!)
- Pour dyed boiling water into flour mixture
- Mix/knead continuously until a dough is formed
- Shape into a heart and add festive Valentine’s Day elements for fun sensory play time! Anything from wooden hearts, rainbows or heart cookie cutters are fun added elements with homemade playdough.
Making your own playdough is a great way to stay plastic-free and you get way more than what you can buy from a store. For a more detailed step-by-step process of making homemade playdough, check out our Fall Scented Homemade Playdough post. Pssst, you can make the homemade playdough any scent you want by using a different spice!
More Eco-friendly Crafts & Projects
Well, there are 5 eco-friendly crafts and Valentine’s Day decorations for your home to get you and your family in the festive mode. Check out some of our other eco-friendly crafts and DIY projects!
- How To Make A DIY Garland Using Power Tools
- Eco-friendly Activities & Easy Crafts For Kids’ Christmas Break
- Hubby How To – DIY Wood Train Set
- How To Make A DIY Writing Tray For Kids
- Top 10 Eco-friendly Fall Crafts & Activities for Toddlers and Kids
Hope this roundup of eco-friendly crafts and Valentine’s Day decorations gets you in the festive mood! Let us know what you think of the crafts and decorations in the comments below!
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