By: Leroy V. & Lime Green Giraffe Copy Editor, Zoey L.


Whether it’s a gift for a significant other, a parent, or a friend, Valentine's Day offers an excellent opportunity to let your creative side shine through with DIY gifts and crafts. Here are the top 10 Valentine’s Day crafts you can make to tell someone you love and appreciate them.


10) DIY jewelry

Making jewelry is one of the most inexpensive and cute ways to go regarding Valentine’s Day gifts. Just grab some red, white, and pink beads or any color of your choice, beading string, glue, a sewing needle, and scissors and you’ll be good to go.


First, develop the pattern you want the beads to go in. You can set this up on a beading tray or just write it down. 

Next, take your beading string and thread one end through the eye of the sewing needle. A needle threader will help this go a lot easier.

You can now cut your string to the desired length. After doing this, it will be best to find a relatively heavy object to put on top of one end of the string to ensure the beads won’t roll off. 

You can start stringing the beads in your desired pattern and add some letter beads or charms to spice it up. 

Leave about three centimeters of string empty, if you don’t have a ruler or just want to eyeball it, you can use the line before the tip of your pinkie as a guide. 

Double or triple knot your string when you are finished, and go in with some jewelry glue to make sure it doesn’t come loose (E6000 is a good brand to use). 

Let the glue dry for 24- hours, and you’re done! 

A good beading channel to look up is TurboBeads on Youtube.


9) Coupons

Making coupons or ticket stubs is an excellent way to put your crafting abilities to the test. To make the coupons, all you’ll need is some colorful cardstock, scissors, and some colorful pens or markers. 


Start by cutting your cardstock into small rectangles. To make them look like tickets, all you need to do is angle your scissors upwards and rotate your paper. To add the fringes, draw out tiny “u”’s with a small line in between, and then cut the “u” part out. 


Now that you have the basic outline of your coupon, you can customize them with fun sayings and adventures such as “movie night” or “lunch with me.” 

To make them pop even more, you can add stickers and glitter glue. 

For gifting, you can clip them together with a paperclip and slip them into an envelope that you can customize as well.


8) A Playlist 

Making a playlist is a beautiful way to tell someone you’re thinking about them and that you care. A playlist can be made either digitally on apps like Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music, or as a mixtape on a cassette. 


For the digital option, compile songs that you know your person likes and will get them up and dancing. This playlist can be as long or short as you like. To personalize this digital gift, you can change the cover from the generic four album tiles to a picture of you together or an aesthetic picture you find online. 


To do this in Spotify, click the three dots below your playlist cover and tap on the edit button that is accompanied by a stylus icon. 

Then, select change image and click the“choose from library” option. 

If you want to add the icing on the cake and make this playlist accessible to only you and whomever you grant access to, click the three dots again and then the “make private” option.


7) An Annotated Book

If your valentine is a bookworm, an annotated book is a perfect and inexpensive gift to give. Even if you’re not into reading, the look on their face when they receive a book fully annotated by you will totally make it worth it. 

For this gift, you don’t need much, just a book that they’ve been looking forward to reading or a favorite book of yours and some highlighters or pens. 

All you have to do is read through the book, and underline, highlight, or comment on some funny moments or some moments you think they’d enjoy in the book. You can even leave a sweet heartfelt note in the back of the book for them to read once they’ve finished.


6) A Highlight Reel of Your Favorite Moments

A cute and unique way to make a scrapbook of your time together is to make a highlight reel, like the ones used for old-school movies and films. 

To make this, all you need is cardboard, a toilet paper roll, paint, scissors, an x-acto knife, sturdy printer paper, glue (a glue stick works just fine, but hot glue will give you a stronger hold), and printed photos. 

First, take your cardboard and cut out two even circles. Then, use your toilet paper roll to trace smaller circles around the larger ones, the number of small circles will vary depending on how large your big circle is. 

Next, with the help and supervision of a trusted adult, use the x-acto knife to cut out the small circles you just used the toilet paper roll to trace. 

Now, paint your two big circles, if you want it to be accurate to film reels, you can use black, gray, or silver, but you can use any color you want. If you want, you can paint the toilet paper roll, but keep in mind that it will be cut and covered up. 

Cut about a third off of your toilet paper roll, and use hot glue to glue it in the center of the two big circles. 

Now, look up online “blank film strips” to find templates of the blank film. You can either sketch these out or print and cut them. You want to have a good amount, so printing about four or five of them and gluing them together is advised. Roll some of the “film” that you don’t plan on using around the toilet paper roll to assess how much of the film you won’t be using.

 Mark the point where the film will become visible, so you know where to begin adding your photos.  

Take your pictures and glue them to the blank spots in the film. Let the glue dry, and you’re done!


5) Valentine’s Basket

If crafting is not your superpower, a Valentine’s basket is a nice and affordable gift to give. Most of the supplies for this can be found at the Dollar Store or a CVS or Walgreens. 

The materials needed for this basket are a small plastic bin or wicker basket, crinkle paper, a stuffed animal, candy, and a card. 

All you have to do is fill the bottom of your small bin or wicker basket with an even layer of crinkle paper and then arrange your stuffed animal, sweets, and card in any way you’d like. You can also add or remove some items from this basket to make it personal to the person who will be receiving it.


4) A Cheesy Love Pun

A cheesy pun is a great way to make a friend or loved one laugh. There are lots of ways to make a silly pun. 

One way is to do it with candy or even themed colors. You could make a note with candies in place of some of the words or you could make a pun with a single brand of candy. One that I found funny was a note on a pack of Haribo Gummy Bears that quoted “Life without you is UnBEARible.” A gummy bear was the BEAR in unbearable.  But you could also use lots of candies. I got some ideas from Pinterest. Another one is a pizza pun. Who says pizza isn’t a great way to express love? Sometimes on Valentine's Day, you can ask your local pizza parlor to make a heart-shaped pizza. If you can once you get your pizza, write on the inside of the box, “Will you be my Valentine or is this too cheesy?” 


3) Heart Crafts

A heart craft is a cute way to express your love. This popular heart craft is my personal favorite and it is simple to make. All you need are about 5 to 8 popsicle sticks, red and white paint, and some mini puzzle pieces. 

First paint the popsicle sticks white, and the small puzzle pieces red or pink if you’d like. Once you’ve painted the parts and let them dry. Once they’re dry, take some hot glue and glue the popsicle sticks together. 

Then glue the painted puzzle pieces on the sticks in a heart shape. Now you have the perfect gift. 

You could even add a little pun at the end, for example, you could write “I love you to pieces” in the space below. 

Another heart craft you could do includes large pom poms, foam or felt hearts, googly eyes, and pipe cleaners. The first thing you do is grab a hot glue gun and glue some red or pink pom poms to foam or felt hearts. Then bend a piece of pipe cleaner into a heart shape and glue it to the top of the pom pom. Then glue two googly eyes to the front of your craft. Then you're done! You could even add arms or name it, it’s up to you


2) Keychains of Love

What you’ll need to make this gift is Fimo clay, jump rings, keychain rings, a heart cookie cutter, and some small letter stamps or just a toothpick. 

First, cut out a heart shape out of clay that is about ¼ of an inch thick. 

Then, use your letter stamps or use a toothpick to engrave a message like “Love” or “Bae” 

Once you’ve finished this step, poke a hole in the top big enough for your jump rings. Now, follow the instructions on the clay to bake it. (Always talk with a trusted adult before using the oven.)

Once baked and cooled, put two jump rings through the hole in the top. 

Then attach the keychain ring, now you have a “candy heart” keychain.


1) An Organized Day of Fun

A planned day of fun is the perfect thing. If its a whole day or just after school, anyone can do it.

First, you will need a piece of paper or notecard. 

Make a bullet list on the card, then list each bullet point with an activity. 

This could include a peaceful picnic, a night out on the town, or even going to the theatre. 

You don’t necessarily have to have a whole day planned, you could just have a romantic night planned. Do the same thing with the bullet points but instead, you have dinner planned and then watch a romantic movie. Now you have a perfect day planned out!


Well, we hope you found a creative way or two to tell the important people in your life you love and appreciate them. Happy Valentine’s Day, readers! đŸ’›


Sources: Goodhousekeeping.com, Pinterest

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