Create gorgeous Valentine doodle art heart cards using our latest printable.
This is an easy and creative Valentine’s Day card idea. It’s not just for kids—teens and adults love doodle art too!
Doodle art, also known as zentangle art, is a relaxing and creative design process involving patterning. We’ve used it a lot! Our library of creative projects includes doodle art bugs, leaves, apples, handprints and Christmas trees.
Now kids can create pretty heart-shaped cards decorated with their own doodle pattern designs.
The card template has two options for the front: a whole heart that opens from the left like a regular card, and a split heart that opens from the centre like a pair of barn doors. The inside options feature Valentine keywords in block letters to decorate in more doodles or a blank inside for your own message.
Here are some finished examples.
Doodling is easy but can be time-consuming, especially if you go with a very intricate pattern. For this reason, I recommend the doodling art activity for all ages 8+.
If you’re working with younger kids, they can still make good use of these heart-shaped templates and decorate them with their own illustrations or simpler patterns.
Basic doodling ideas for decorating these cards:
- Divide the heart into sections and create a continuous pattern in each section
- Create concentric hearts one inside the other, using different line techniques to create patterns. Eg: loopy lines, scalloped edge lines, straight lines, filled lines etc.
- Choose a pattern theme and create doodles based around it. Eg: Weather-inspired patterns like in my example below. Some other theme ideas that could work well are fruit, Spring, love, flowers and animal patterns.
How to make a Valentine’s Day Heart Card
You will need:
- Markers for doodling. I used sharpie (permanent marker) for the outline on mine and coloured this in with water-based markers. This way the colours don’t run into each other like they might if you used only water based markers.
- Glue stick
- Scissors
- The printable template, available from our printables shop and TPT store
How to:
Print the card front of your choice plus the card inside of your choice to card stock. Print to either coloured or white card, either works. I like the combination of one colour and one white page on the same card.
Decorate the front of your card in doodle designs. Use coloured markers or plain black, both look effective. Also, decorate the block word letters on the inside of your card if you have chosen a printed message.
Cut the card shapes out. If using the barn door card, cut the heart along the centre line to get two halves.
Fold and glue the card tab (or 2 tabs) on the card inside.
It’s that simple! But simple projects are often the best, aren’t they?
You might also like:
- This patterned paper heart spinner decoration is another cool patterning idea. It comes with a decorate-your-own version, a full colour version, or a line art version for kids to colour in.
- Spread the love with some paper heart people
- If you have preschoolers, try this paper roll love bug craft
- We have a super cute printable fairy letter set to create tiny letters
