Love Bugs

We're getting closer to Valentine's Day, which is by far my favorite crafting holiday and I love sharing the fun with the boys. Big Brother is already getting excited by remembering some of last year's projects. We have several fun crafts planned for the next few weeks. We kicked off this year's Valentine's Day crafting with these egg carton "Love Bugs."

To begin with, Big Brother painted the bottom of an egg carton with red and white paint, mixing it to make mostly pink. We let the carton dry for a couple of hours.

After painting the egg carton we added in foam heart stickers (from the dollar store), sparkly pipe cleaners cut in half, heart shaped sequins, googly eyes, glitter glue, and beads. 

First I cut each cup away from the others. (This was a grown-up job, as it was actually harder than I expected to cut the carton.)  As I cut I made each one look like it had four "legs." A true bug would have six legs, but it looked better with four.  

We used a bamboo skewer to poke two holes in the top of each cup; the holes were for the antenna. 

Big Brother then used the rest of the materials to add to the bugs. The hearts became the wings, the pipe cleaners and the beads became the antennas, and of course we used the glitter glue to affix the eyes. Big Brother really got into the idea of us working like a "machine" with each of us having special parts to do. 

We created a whole little "family" of love bugs. Big Brother came up with a great love bug noise, and the bugs now like to fly around talking to one another. He did decide to send off a few as early Valentines too, although has already asked to make some more. 

Although this was our first Valentine's Day craft, we did already make some yummy Valentine's Day popcorn too!

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