Toilet roll tube valentine's necklaces

I know, it sounds too glamourous to be true doesn't it!

When I had the idea, I wasn't sure if my girls at three and five were going to be able to do this without getting cross at the thread and beads being fiddly, but they actually did pretty darn well. My three year old had no desire to make her necklace symmetrical, but she still happily threaded all the beads herself. My five year old made lots of necklaces with different designs.

All you need is a toilet roll tube, some sissors and a hole punch to make the hearts. Start bysquashing the loo roll flat, then cutting it in cm wide sections.

Then reverse one of the creases on itself and bend it a bit to make the heart shape.

Hole punch where the string is going to be threaded through.

Give kids sloppy paint to coat the hearts in. I usually cover a baking tray with a sheet of tin foil with this sort of small paint project, because the kids then seem to try and keep the mess to the tray.

Once they are dry, you might need to reshape them a bit, but they will be fairly sturdy, and you can start threading them with beads.

We have a random assortment of beads from all over the place, so I just gave the kids some that were valentine colours and they set about threading them together.

I reckon this would keep girlies up to about eight or nine years old happy for quite a while. There are many many different combinations that you could come up with. Older kids might want to make the heart shapes themselves out of card, rather than cutting up toilet rolls.

If you put a couple of strategic snips in the cardboard hearts then you can make them interlock in different ways...

They are looking pretty all hung up in our kitchen at the moment, but will be making their way to Grandmas soon.

Their dad made them a present each last night that I think he'll probably put on his blog soon, and so he was awarded with a bogroll necklace of love. Pretty.