Heart coffee filter zipper pull

As part of our Valentines Day snail mail swap, I wanted Nico to make something for the kids to use. He enjoys coloring on coffee filters, so I thought suncatcher… nah not “useful” enough. Ok what else could we do using those laminated coffee filters…well they do become waterproof. Kids like things hanging off their zippers. Zipper pulls! So I had him do a few red coffee filters.

I figured we’d get a really nice red going with the bingo marker, yeah that didn’t last long, it wasn’t filling the space quickly enough for him…

So I gave him a red water based marker, same  results, not fast enough…

Then he wanted to try water color paint, didn’t seem to work for him either….

Then he wanted regular acrylic paint, but this needed to be see through so I diluted it in the watercolor water bowl (he stirred, he loves stirring!) and that seemed to have been the one! He did a few filters like that and he was content.

He put them to dry and on the weekend when we turned ourselves into a heart factory I cut a bunch of hearts out of them (I used a cookie cutter to trace the heart and folded it in a cone shape to cut a bunch at once).

I then placed them all in a laminated sheet and off to the laminator they were, Nico watched attentively.  He’s still amazed at how it works

Then we had fun looking at life through hearts We all had to take a photo of course!

Off he was to play while I cut all the hearts. I had to do holes in them to get the hook for the zipper clip. Alex had pulled out a heart shape punch but it turned out too big (but we use it for the cards of many hearts) so we got the regular hole punch. Nico was adamant about doing it himself, but going through laminate with a hole punch is not easy! He tried his best but there was no way his little hands were strong enough, even I had trouble.

After all of them had their hole, Alex put all the hooks (24 for 1$ at the dollar store)  in while I worked on the cards. We used rolled up tape and taped them up inside the card with a little note that said: A little heart to keep you warm!  (Since those are intended for a coat zipper, if you zip up you’ll stay warm )

If you do this, we’d LOVE to see a photo of it. Email it to us or post it on our Facebook page. We’d love to do a Facebook album, a Pinterest board and a page of your creations

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