Paper Heart Chain

Fold, cut, and decorate paper into a chain of paper hearts for Valentine's Day.	Safety Tips Young kids (3 to 8 years) should use child-safe scissors.
Materials Paper Scissors Pencil Crayons, markers or paint (optional)

Steps

	1.	Although you can use any paper size, it is quite convenient to start out with standard A4 or Letter size paper. Fold and cut it lengthwise in half to come up with 2 long sheets of paper. Each sheet can be made into a chain of hearts.
	2.	Take one sheet of paper and fold it accordion-style (back-and-forth folding) starting from one short edge of the paper. An A4 or Letter size paper can typically make a chain of 3 to 4 hearts. If your folds are around 1 ¼ inches wide, you can make a chain of 4 hearts. Wider than that, you'll probably come up with a 3-heart chain.
	3.	Continue folding until you have folded the entire paper.
	4.	Draw half a heart on the paper's top fold. Notice how the curved part of the heart goes over the edge of the paper. This will make sure that the hearts are connected.
		You can make paper hearts with cut away sections. Mark out these cut away or "negative" sections. Make sure that they're accessible to cutting from the folded edge of the paper. Otherwise, you may need to use a craft knife to cut them away.
	5.	Cut around the outlines of the heart. *If making paper hearts with cut away sections, it would be much easier to cut out the inner sections first before cutting the main heart outline.
	6.	Unfold to reveal a chain of hearts. Trim off any excess paper after the last heart.
	7.	Color, paint or decorate the hearts as you please.
	8.	If you want a contrasting color to frame your paper hearts, you can glue the entire paper heart chain onto any colored paper. Cut the paper close to the edges of the paper hearts. Hang the chain of hearts as a Valentine's Day garland or room décor.

More Ideas

	Enjoy exploring the different designs you can make in cutting away sections inside the folded heart, quite similar to making paper snowflakes.
	Scout around for interesting gift wrap and other paper scraps to recycle into beautiful paper heart chains. Choose contrasting colors of paper to cover the heart chain's cut-away sections for a lovely effect.
	Make stained glass paper hearts by covering the spaces with colored cellophane or tissue paper.
	Buttons, beads, ribbons and other notions add extra charm to your paper hearts!

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