Omigosh it’s already time for Valentine’s day decor?! Don’t fret! I have the perfect little naptime craft project that ALL moms and Target-lovers will L-O-V-E! ????
(I will spare you for now all about how this banner may as well be my own personal Valentine from my heart directly to Target because of how much I adore that place. It’s basically my “gym membership” except by “gym” I mean “place I can wear workout clothes to and sip a latte while chaeuffering my one and 3-year-old girls around the clearance end caps.” )
I am pretty sure that you will have everything needed on hand for this project or you can easily improvise!
I have created a gallery of all the steps below so that you can just take a look at the steps and then you can read the actual instructions below too.
First, gather your supplies:
- four target bags (you can use any bag but we are using these for the red and white for V day!)
- iron
- ironing board/pressing surface
- wax paper
- empty cereal box or kraft paper (thick brown/natural-colored cardstock)
- hole punch
- baker’s twine (or yarn or whatever you would like to string everything together)
- sharpie
Okay, let’s get started!
- Plug in your iron and set it to cotton/medium-high heat.
- While your iron is warming up, it’s time to get your Target bags situated. Flatten them out and lay them on top of each other in a stack. Turn the ones on the outsides inside out so they will not stick to the wax paper (because of the ink heating up too much when being ironed.)
- Cut off the handles.
- Lay one to two pieces of wax paper directly on top of your ironing/pressing surface. Lay down the plastic bag stack. Lay down more wax paper to cover the bags completely (you do NOT want an icky mess of plastic stuck to your iron!)
- Time to iron! We will be creating a fused material out of the bags! (This is so cool because once you learn this technique, you can do so many other cool projects with your new plastic bag “fabric.”) Start in the center of the bags and iron out towards the edges. Keep making several passes over the wax paper and bags (maybe 10 or so) and then flip the wax paper and bags over (they will be partially stuck together) and repeat the ironing on the other side. (You may want to check after several passes of the iron to make sure that everything is fusing together well. Don’t over think it though!)
- Set aside and let cool for a minute. While that cools you can create a heart template using your cereal box and sharpie.
- Peel wax paper from fused plastic. DON’T freak out if it’s kinda stuck! It won’t be noticeable in the final product! Promise!
- Use template to stencil as many hearts as you can on your bag and cereal box.
- Cut out all of your hearts and punch holes in the tops.
- String them together in alternating order (cereal box-target bag-cereal box-target bag-cereal box-etc…) and tie a little loop at each end.
- Hang and enjoy!
Pin this frugal, fun project here for later.
