a portrait of a heart

We enjoyed another craft day over the weekend with a little sweet ‘heart’ theme again. My daughter had so much fun doing this ‘canvas’ heart from dried beans and grains. It was messy but good fun.  And we now have a beautiful eco-friendly heart canvas to hang in our kitchen – the ‘heart’ of our home.

We have embraced eco-crafting fully and just enjoy creating something from things we already have. In this case I used an empty pizza box, flipped inside out and used that as our ‘canvas’ base. The decorations were all natural beautiful textures of millet grains, lentils, black and white rice, ground walnut shells (birdcage litter).

Supplies : pizza box, an assortment of dried beans and grains, good quality non-toxic glue and brush to spread it evenly and a hot glue gun. A sheet of extra cardboard for the pizza box as a filler helps it to keep shape. paper towel, large cardboard to work on (as this is a little messy), a box to catch grains that fall off, vacuum for clean up.

What to do: 1 – 3. open the pizza box inside out and hot glue the two side panels. 4. insert a sheet of folded cardboard so it fills the inside of the box so it doesn’t warp in. Not shown: If you plan to hang your piece and need a hole in the back, make it now by punching in a nail a few inches from the top in the centre.

5. paint a heart shape with the glue. 6 – 7. sprinkle your choice of grains 8. press down with a paper towel to get more grains to hold onto the glue. 9. shake off excess. (we had a bit of an accident with the glue splattering too much, but all worked out fine, we wiped off the extra rice from the centre and proceeded with the next.)

This is one of those project that is meant to be rustic – so the imperfections just add character to your own work of art. Embrace them ;)

10 – 12. continue as before, painting a heart with a glue, sprinkling grains, pressing and shaking off excess.

Our heart consisted of : the orange heart = split red lentils. black heart = black rice. brown heart = walnut ground shells (we already had a bag of this as birdcage litter). white heart in centre = white rice. background = mixed hot cereal grains, but millet would work well.

When my girl had the heart shapes in place, she leaned back looking it over and exclaimed “this looks like a portrait of a heart” ~ hence the name of this craft ;)

This was so much fun! My four year old was so focused and led the entire craft project on her own. I helped a bit with brushing the glue closer to the finished hearts etc. – but this was really her independent work. What a little treasure she created ~ it will go up in our kitchen as soon as we make a good home for it – to symbolize “the heart of our home”.

ps. remember this is kinda messy. have a vacuum standing by ;)

I hope you’ve enjoyed our eco-craft of our ‘Portrait of a Heart’. I hope you’ll create your own messy craft with the kiddos in your family. This is a beautiful craft not just for Valentine’s Day but to leave out in a special place all year round. xo