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Freebie: A Messenger Pigeon Valentine Craft for Kids
Well, Valentine’s Day has totally gone to the birds over here. 😉 Between the cuckoo clocks and this new little buddy, we are bound and determined to fly by and deliver some printable Valentine love your way this year! Meet “Tweet-heart” (shoutout to our Instagram friends for the adorable name recommendations). This sweet little Messenger Pigeon is ready & willing to deliver a mini-message to your besties or beloveds in his tiny satchel.
Our printable PDF has a full-color template page + a black & white template page in case you’d rather color paint, or watercolor your own! There is a “left” and right” Tweet-heart (in case you want to mount yours on cardboard and make it fly as we did) as well as a pattern for the envelope and note.
To make your own Messenger Pigeon Valentine you’ll need:
BASIC SUPPLIES:
- 1 or 2 pages of heavy cardstock
- Scissors
- Glue
- A piece of ribbon or twine
- Our messenger pigeon valentine free printable PDF
OPTIONAL SUPPLIES FOR FLIGHT:
- A piece of corrugated cardboard
- A long piece of thick string or twine
DIY Messenger Pigeon Valentine Instructions:
- Print and cut out templates
Print out the desired template pages onto heavy cardstock and cut out each of the pieces.
- Fold and glue the small envelope
For the envelope, fold along the dotted lines. Pull the bottom of the envelope in, then fold the sides on top and glue. You can add the heart to the tip of your envelope top for a little added luuuurrrve. 🙂
- Add a ribbon to the envelope to make it a mail pouch
Cut a 4- 5 inch piece of ribbon or twine and glue each side to the inside of the top fold to create your satchel strap.
- Write your valentine on the small note included!
Write your note, slip it in the satchel and seal it with a kiss (or…a tiny dab of glue – or both)! 😉
You can give this as is, mount it on a colorful sheet of construction paper, OR even make a version that “flies” like we did (!) FYI – this is a fantastic STEAM project for kids.
Ready to tackle flight?
Fair warning: I am going to have a hard time explaining the steps for this…but I’m going to give it my best go – if you have questions, be sure to leave them in the comments and I’ll try to clarify exactly what we did.
Step 1: Glue one side of your pigeon to a piece of corrugated cardboard. Make sure you glue it down with the corrugation aligned as shown above, so it will fly upright!
Step 2: Using a good pair of scissors or utility knife, cut out around your pigeon.
Step 3: Flip your mounted pigeon over and glue it on the opposite side.
Step 4: Thread a strong piece of thread or twine through the corrugation (dotted line indicates the direction). You’re going to need to tie one end of the string to a “finish point” and the other side to a higher “launch point”.
We made ours a little more complicated by creating a pulley system so we could pull it up and down, sharing notes back and forth. We went through all the previous steps, then used the same idea to make a “pull” cord, threading it through the same way, but then threading it back UP through the next level of corrugation, towards us (does that make sense??) all the way to the launch point. From there, we tied the pull cord to a long, piece of cardboard tube that we added some weight to, so it wouldn’t move.
I am really trying to conceptualize how you did the pulley and I can’t figure it out! Are there 3 strings passed through the pigeon? The original one from the instructions and then one passed through again and then back the opposite way? And the original string is fixed to a launching and finishing point? Also what are you pulling on to make the pigeon move back and forth if it is tied to a cardboard tube? haha! Sorry for all the questions!
Thanks!