VALENTINE'S DAY BOOK + CRAFT

CUTIEPANTS VALENTINE'S DAY BOOK ALERT!! Click, Clack, Moo I Love You! is pretty much everything you ever wanted in a Heart Day picture book: hearts, lots of giggles, sparkle and sweetness galore PLUS dancing mice and casserole! 🤓

Kinley and I both love every book in the Click, Clack, Moo series and we were so excited when this one showed up on our doorstep (Thanks, Simon Kids!!) Do you know these crazy farm animals? The premise of them all is a little like Toy Story on a farm -- what the animals do when the humans aren't paying attention, ya know?

In this one, a cute little yellow duck is rushing around getting everything decorated and ready for a big Valentine's Day dance for all of the animals. She makes everyone a sparkly valentine and a necklace with hearts made of everything she can find. We saw a crafty opportunity the minute we saw those sweet little accessories! Sparkly heart necklaces?! SIGN US UP!

Wanna do a little Valentine's Day bookish play, too? This is the perfect super easy classroom party activity -- super low-mess, quick and easy, and they can wear the finished products for the cookie and candy eating!

VALENTINE RAINBOWS

Kinley woke me up one morning with a little doodle on a purple scrap of construction paper and a big crafty idea from her dreams the night before -- VALENTINE RAINBOWS! Why the heck not, right?! She had me at rainbows. And valentines. And crafty dreams! 😍😊

We worked together to come up with this super simple and crazy sweet little project and I think you and your little artist buddies are gonna love it! Valentine rainbows are totally perfect for a preschool or kindergarten Valentine's Day party because you've probably already got everything you need on hand, no one will need help with any of the easy steps*, it's quick and you're looking at a Level 1 Clean-up (wet paper towel only! 🤓), baby!

MORE JIM DINE HEART ART

If you are looking for the instructions for these beauties, don't worry! They just moved to our brand-new and even rainbowier website, hellomoonpie.com.

Just click right here to head straight over to them!

Happy heart arting!
xo Cara

EGG CARTON LOVE BUGS

We've made egg carton flowers and egg carton dinosaurs and egg carton snowmen, but we didn't have an egg carton Valentine's Day creationin our collection...until now! Introducing our fancy little swarm of valentine LOVE BUGS! Wait, swarm doesn't sound all that lovely, does it? Team? Crew? Family? Eh...we'll come back to that 🤓

This is one of those magical unicorn kid art projects. No, not like actually making a magical unicorn. I mean it's one of those ultra rare ones where you get to do a little crafting and a little process art that never turns out brown and muckyish (thank you Valentine's Day color palette!) and then you put the two together and you get something flipping adorable every single time!

15 EASY + FUN VALENTINE'S DAY ART IDEAS

Friends, you know we love to craft and art and go nuts with the rainbows, but did you know we are absolutely cuckoo cuh-razy for HOLIDAY art? Christmas, Halloween, we even manage to go bananas for Turkey Day around here, but let's face it: there is one holiday that has a five star color palette AND packs a reason to bust out all the glitter and ribbon and stickers and washi tape and is, therefore, our ultimate fave. You guessed it! VALENTINE'S DAY!

My mom instilled in me a deep love of all things heart holiday from a very young age. That lady just loves love. She loves hearts and love notes and chocolate and flowers -- Valentine's Day was basically built for her! She throws a valentine party every year that every single member of our family looks forward to all year long. We play games and do crafts and exchange valentines and she decorates everything in her house floor to ceiling all red and pink and sparkly to the maxx 😍😍

So, anyway, I thought I'd throw together a quick list of our tried and true crafty fun favorites just in case you are looking to have one heck of a Heart Day, too! If you see something you like, just click the pic or the title and it will take you straight to the instructions. Some are from my brain and some are from the brains of my artsy + amazing buddies and hopefully they will ALL inspire you 😁 oh, and I included a party game that is always and forever THE BIGGEST HIT with the little humans at my mom's parties as a bonus at the very end of this post, so don't stop scrolling, homie!

JIM DINE HEART ART

I can't believe I haven't written a blog post since October! What the heck?! The holidays were nuts, man, and to tell you the truth I am having a heck of a time shaking the post holiday funk. Why can't adulting include one month a year (preferably January) to lay around bingeing Netflix and eating chocolate in sweatpants? Ah well...if anything will snap me out of it, it's a little famous artist fun!

Kinley and I have studied lots of different artists over the past couple of years, but we always seems to fall most deeply in love with the vibrant + graphic modern and pop art making ones and when I came across Jim Dine on a random Google the other day, I knew I had found our newest obsession! That guy just happens to be the perfect artist for a Valentine's Day art study, too 😍

RAINBOW DOILY ART

I don't know which I love more about that project: the rainbow doily remnants or the finished art itself! Doesn't it all just make your eyeballs so happy?! I've got some good news for ya, too -- if you've got a teeny tiny person at your house, you might just be able to make this one happen! I used to do it every year with my daycare babies -- if you can sit up, you can make a pretty heart doily painting.

RECYCLED SCRAPE ART TURKEYS

Have you ever tried scrape art? Well don't. I mean you can, but if you do you better have plenty of paper and paint on hand because you are never gonna wanna stop. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Kinley and I had a whole stockpile of scrape art goodness from one of our extreme can't-stop-won't stop scrape art sessions, but we never got around to doing anything with the infinite rainbow-y scraped papers we made until this week when they all became turkey tail feathers, and aren't they the most flutterly glorious turkey tail feathers ever?!

JINGLE FELT WREATH ORNAMENT

Don't you just love felt? We've got gobs of that stuff in the trusty old fabric bin! The other day, I grabbed all of the colors I could find and piled it on the table hoping the perfect felt art idea would just come to Kinley and I if we just stared at those rainbow scraps long enough. At one point, Kinley grabbed her scissors and started chopping a pink piece into tiny squares and it hit me -- string those babies together and make a wreath! Even better, a wreath ornament!! (Christmas mania is in full swing over here. The halls are decked, the trees are up and decorated and Christmas movies are on a loop every second of everyday 😍)

COLLAGE TURKEYS

When Maggy from Red Ted Art asked me to dream up a cute little Thanksgiving craft to share with her followers, I thought our fave collage turkeys from last year would be the perfect project, but instead of tiny cork collage turkeys (sooo 2017 😉) we supersized them and made big ol cardboard ones.

COFFEE FILTER PUMPKINS

*This post contains affiliate links.

Got coffee filters and washable markers? Well, go pull them out, friend, because you've gotta try this process art pumpkin craft!

A couple of days ago, my buddy Diane from @adventures.in.mommyland shared some cute little Frankensteins she'd made with our kiddo using our free Halloween paper doll printable and this technique and we couldn't resist giving it a try ourselves, but jack-o'-lantern style.

SPIN ART SPIDERS

Grab your googly eyes and popsicle sticks and dust off the ol salad spinner, friend, 'cause we've got one of our favorite Halloween crafting traditions for ya today: cute little spidies + psychedelic spin art webs!

This one is kind of the best of both worlds -- a little bit of super fun process art and a little bit of sweet sweet crafty magic! Kinley and I make these babies every single year. It's so fun to watch her spiders evolve and look more and more spider-like as she gets older.

PHOTO PAPER + LIQUID WATERCOLOR ART

Are you here for the watercolor + photo paper art ideas? Well, good news! They just moved over to our brand-new and even rainbowier website, hellomoonpie.com.

Head straight to the photo paper art instructions by clicking right here.

See you over there!
xo Cara

TROLL HAIR ART

Awhile ago, some of my favorite bloggers (@artcampla, @barleyandbirch, @ohcreativeday and @momcollaborative) and I teamed up to bring back the 80's for one week only...I'm pretty sure we could have easily made it a month-long thang because there is seriously just too much gnarly to squeeze into five days!

The music, the clothes, the colors, the books, the shows, the movies...EVERYTHING IS RADICAL!!

Kinley was pretty stoked when I told her we were doing Troll art...and then I showed her the eighties Troll printable I made for the project and she was all "Ugh! GRODY Momma! What is that thing? Gag me with a spoon!" (Well, okay she didn't use those EXACT words, I took the liberty of translating them for my fellow 80's kids. You're welcome. )

PULLED STRING ART

One of my buddies sent me a Facebook post a few weeks ago that blew my mind! It was all about the magic of string pulling art and Kinley and I couldn't wait to give it a try ourselves...and then we couldn't stop.

BIG MESSY OUTDOOR ART

I don't think Kinley or I will ever forget this day spent gooping around in rainbow paint in the backyard. She could've smushed that homemade gel paint between her digits for hours!

BLOW-PAINT MONSTERS

We used to run an art challenge on Instagram called @smocks.on with a couple of my instabuddies and we had hosts every week who got to pick a theme and challenge all of our little art community to incorporate their theme into an art project. When my crazy hilarious, super rad, oh-so-creative blog buddy, Shannon from OhCreativeDay, had her chance to host she chose action art.

I instantly thought big and crazy messy when I read her theme choice, but it was cold, rainy and incredibly dreary outside in our neck of the woods. Big and messy are not good indoor art words, right? Luckily, action art doesn't have to be crazy. Small and semi-neat can work too!

THE MUSICAL CANVAS EXPERIMENT

Not a day goes by at our house without at least one spontaneous dance party and at least one super messy art project, so why it never occurred to me to combine the two before the day we gave our musical canvas experiment a try is beyond me!

I bought a couple of ginormous canvases at Michael's a couple of weeks ago for 70% off just because they were a great deal and when Kinley was bored last weekend, I decided it was the perfect time to bust one out and get that gal occupied. I grabbed some paint, my iPad and the trusty paint-splattered Bluetooth speaker for our usual art-making background noise and we headed out to our favorite creating spot in the backyard.

While Kinley squirted the red paint in her jar, I turned on some 80s jams and she just got right down to it, singing and flinging paint to the beat...and then it hit me. Wouldn't it be cool to change up the music style with each color of paint and see if her painting style changed to match?!

RUBBER CEMENT RESIST MAGIC

Sometimes I go to sleep thinking creative thoughts and wake up with a brilliant art idea or twenty that I can't wait to try with Kinley, and then sometimes I go to bed exhausted and wake up with not a single solitary teeny tiny inkling of an idea what we should eat for lunch let alone a creative thought in my brain and on those days I hit Pinterest. 😉😜

This rubber cement art idea is one that I've seen on several of my trips to that enchanted place where the amazing ideas are abundant (almost too abundant sometimes, right?) and it actually turned out just as pretty as they promised -- one of those Pinterest unicorns, ya know? 😂

FROZEN RAINBOW GOOP

If you've ever played with oobleck, you know the texture is strangely irresistible but you haven't lived until you've slopped around in a giant tray of frozen rainbowy kind! When I spotted this amazing idea from the fabulous brain of babbledabbledo.com's Ana, I knew we absolutely had to give it a try.