Coffee break crafting: love birds

Here is an easy little thing to make to brighten up Valentine’s Day and early Spring. A flock of paper doves, the topical bit being that their wings are heart shaped. Clever, eh?! And they do say that birds choose their mate on Valentine’s Day. My son, who is seven and who loves any paper-based creativity, enjoyed making these with me.

You will need: some thickish paper or thin card, scissors, a cutting board and craft knife, a needle and thread and some pens/ paint/ glitter for decorating the birds as you wish.

First make your template. On a piece of scrap card, draw yourself a simple bird shape – or copy mine! – and cut it out. Then draw a heart. I made mine so that the curves of the bird’s back and chin fit the curves of the heart, which makes cutting out easier and makes the shapes more pleasing together. (I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but I will anyway, that the easiest way to draw a symmetrical heart is to draw one half, fold the card in two and cut the two sides out together.)

Now you can draw around the bird and wing templates on the card of your choice and make as many birds as you like.
Once you have your basic shapes for each bird, cut a little less than half way up the middle of the heart,

and cut a slot along the side of the bird a little more than half the heart’s length.

Feed the heart through the slot to make the bird’s wings.

You can decorate the birds or not as you like. My son thinks this is the best bit, whereas I rather like the idea of plain white doves or, alternatively, white doves with a red heart for their wings. The red and white ones look rather Danish to me: I think it must be because they share the bright, simple colours of the Dannebrog, the Danish flag.

Finally, ‘sew’ or otherwise attach threads to your birds – we used red thread – and hang them up from a curtain rail or similar. Our little flock, hanging from the kitchen light, is a motley bunch, centred around a much more impressive cockerel which came as a gift card designed by Mark Hearld. (Although his does not have heart shaped wings!) I hope that, haphazard as they are, they might inspire you to create your own little flock of love birds this Valentine’s Day.

You can find another idea for things to make with children in Making magic moments.