This little love bug craft is perfect for Valentine’s Day! Your kiddos will love making it, and they can even use it as a teacher or grandparent gift.
I recently found myself with an abundance of terra-cotta pots. Jackpot, right? The woman who lived in our house before us left a bunch of great stuff, terra-cottas included. So naturally I’ve decided to turn some of them into craft projects with Lulu.
For Christmas we made a snowman and trees, and now we have a cute new Valentine’s Day craft! Take a look at our little love bug candy dish creation:
This was a lot of fun to make and Lulu absolutely loves seeing him everyday. We named him Buzz. Read on to see how we made him so you and your littles can have a love bug of your very own!
Here’s what we used:
•2 small to medium size terra cotta pots
•paints- I suggest NOT using finger paints. We made a Christmas tree using them and it peeled all over!
•paintbrushes
•googly eyes (or you can paint the eyes on)
•small colorful pom poms
•2-3 pipe cleaners
•cardstock- we actually just used index cards (could also use foam paper if you have it)
•craft glue/hot glue
It’s important to me that Lulu can fully take part in the crafts we do. I see so many beautiful kids’ projects on Pinterest that I LOVE, but I know it’s gotta be mostly the parent doing it.
I will admit that since I was taking pictures to share this with you, I did go over Lulu’s paint job and encourage the placement of some things haha. BUT I let her paint it completely to her heart’s content first, and I purposely chose to glue pom poms so that she could place them herself.
I’ve seen other versions of this that were super cute and had stripes or hearts painted on, but I knew she wouldn’t be able to do that quite yet. The whole point was for her to do as much as possible!
So once we got it all painted, we took a snack break! What, you didn’t know that was an official part of craft time? It is! At least in this case, we had to let the paint dry so it just worked out anyway.
Then I cut elongated heart shapes out of the index cards (switched from pink to white) and some lace paper we had lying around and made the wings. After that we glued the pom poms and arms to the lower half, and the eyes to the top half. I also painted on a little smile.
You could finish here if you’d like, but I felt that those little pipe cleaner arms were begging to hold something. So I simply just cut out a heart and wrote a quote on it.
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I chose “All you need is love… and some chocolate”. Other options could be: “there’s a love bug going around” or “you’re cute as a bug”. All that was left at this point was to hot glue the two pots together and fill ‘er up with chocolate!
This was a fun project for us to do together, and now we have a fancy love bug candy dish to use every February! I thought about giving it away as a gift but… we decided Buzz belonged with us 🙂
However, this would make a great gift to a grandparent or teacher- especially if they’re candy lovers! (And really, who isn’t?) For another cute idea for grandparents, check out Not Quite Super Mom’s awesome idea!
I hope your Valentine’s Day is full of LOVE and CHOCOLATE this year!! Will you be making your own love bug Valentine’s Day craft? Let me know in the comments below what you’ll be doing to celebrate!
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That is absolutely adorable! I want to make it
Thank you! It’s pretty easy to make, too!
That is such a cute DIY and it doesn’t sound hart to make
Nope it’s really not! Now it’s a fun little decoration that my daughter can be proud of 🙂
Oh how adorable is this? I love the DIY and how perfect it is for kiddos!
Thank you! Yeah I always aim for crafts and projects that they can actually participate in, I thought this worked out great!
Super DIY idea. Something we will definitely have to try with our kiddos! Thank you.
Thank you for saying so! I hope you and your kiddos enjoy it ?
How crafty and bold of you haha I know how crafts go with pre schoolers. We just made puppets and yep snack breaks. Anyways love your bug pots!
Hahaha I always find myself thinking “why did I think this was a good idea?!” Whenever the paint gets taken out. But she loves it so we make it work 🙂
This is a great idea for Valentines Day and also perfect as a mom and daughter bonding or for date night! I always love arts and crafts and even if i’m not a kid i’m down to try this!
Oh my gosh, right? Some of these kid crafts are so dang cute too!
This is super adorable! I think I’ll keep this in mind for when I have kids someday. 🙂
You totally should 🙂
This is super cute! I love the mini pom poms for an added 3D touch!
Thank you! Yeah I liked those also so my daughter could help rather than painting a design on. They are fun!
Such cute ideas!! I’m sure you will treasure these for years to come
Oh definitely 🙂 while I do love the scribbles and randomly glued pieces of paper crafts, it’s always nice to have one that’s a little less “abstract” ?
This is such an adorable craft! I’ll have to do this with my toddler! 🙂
Definitely a great craft idea for the young ones. Keep it up. I have a post about crafting with toddlers. Can I leave a link to this post as it goes really well together?
Yes absolutely!
What a super fun idea – this is the cutest (AND most unique!) Valentine’s craft I’ve ever seen! And I love that kids can make it their own – it really opens them up to use their creativity muscles 🙂
Oh thank you! Yes exactly I love doing stuff that let’s her use her creativity ?
I love this! So cute for kids!
This is such a cute idea for the little ones! These would make great teacher gifts.
So cute and fun!
Such a cute craft, thanks for sharing
This is such a cute craft! I think my children’s grandmother would love to do this with the cousins. Will be sharing it with her! The photos are so adorable!! What kind of paint did you end up using?
That would be so fun for them to do together! We used acrylic paint and it turned out to be perfect for this ?
How cute is the DIY craft, I am going to share it with my son.