Pencil Huggers- A Valentine's Day Craft

Today we have a fun little project to share with you! Valentine's Day is rapidly approaching and I don't know about you, but I think my kids get MORE than enough candy during the holidays. So this year, I'm making these fun little pencil huggers for my preschooler's class. They're super cute, easy and fairly inexpensive to make. And I'm going to show you how to make them too!


 

Pencil Huggers- A Valentine's Day Craft!

To start, we need supplies.


You'll need:


  • a shape template (that you can get free here)
  • felt (pick a traditional red or pink, or go crazy with non-traditional colors or printed felt!)
  • some fun pencils (if you aren't as concerned about the candy, you can use suckers instead)
  • pins
  • scissors
and
  • your sewing machine

Prep Work



We'll start by cutting out the smallest heart shape from the template. Then take that heart and trace it onto your felt. I used a sharpie pen so it would be easy to see, and after construction, you shouldn't be able to see the markings anyway. As you can see in my photo, I managed to get 12 hearts per sheet of felt.



After they're all traced out, I laid the sheet of felt with the traced images directly on top of a second unmarked sheet. I then placed pins through both layers at the center of each of the traced hearts. This helps the felt to not slip while you're cutting.



We will cut the two layers at once to make sure they are perfect pairs. this helps in the final construction.



 

Now, remove the pins, but keep your pairs together. Take the traced heart piece from each pair (I recommend doing this one at a time, so as not to confuse the pairs) and draw a roughly 1/2" line about 1/2" from the top and bottom center of the heart. This will be where the pencils are placed. Use your scissors to clip a little slit through the one layer where you drew your lines.

Construction



Now that we have everything ready, we'll get to the fun part. At this point, I want you to consider that your perfectly matching heart pieces are right side together with the visible part of your tracing on the outside (wrong side). I want you to flip both of those pieces so that they are right sides together with the ink to the inside. If you did this correctly, your pieces should still be perfectly matched. Pin those pairs around the perimeter.



Here's where you have options. You can use a hand blanket stitch to finish these if you're good at that sort of thing (I'm not). If you are going to machine sew, you can choose to match or contrast the thread with the felt color. You can choose a straight, zigzag, or decorative stitch to complete the project. I chose to use a contrasting white thread with a decorative stitch, shown above.



The easiest way to do this without the machine trying to eat at the felt is to start at the center top and sew down to the bottom point. I place my felt just past the 1/8" mark to sew. Then repeat for the opposite side.





Now all you need to do is stick a pencil through the holes and you have finished pencil huggers! Aren't they adorable?

The BEST thing about these pencil huggers is that you can adapt it to ANY holiday by simply switching out the shape you use! Use a bunny for Easter, a pumpkin for Halloween, a tree for Christmas... possibilities abound! If you loved this craft, or have suggestions for other blog topics you'd like to see, please drop a comment below! Also be sure to join our Facebook group for fun, support, and showing off and all things BSD!
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