Pipe Cleaner Bead Hearts
Currently my preschooler is in to beads, beads, beads. Anything fine motor, actually is capturing her interest and I have been looking for ways to support the fine motor exploration (besides cutting her own hair, her other recent obsession…)
We enjoyed making ourselves this hanging heart art from pipe cleaners and beads – I love it when we can work together to make something to decorate our space.
You will need:
- Pony Beads
- Pipe Cleaners
- Fishing line or string for hanging.
Setup:
Fuzzy Fabric Bead Tray
When we work with beads we like to take out a tray or a cookie sheet and line it with a piece of fuzzy fabric. We keep these rectangular pieces of fleece in the bead bin just for this purpose. It makes the beads less likely to bounce away and helps with clean up – just grab the fabric corners and you can swoop the beads into the center and dump them back in your bead bin.
Making Your Bead Hearts
Sting your beads onto your pipe cleaners. I worked next to my preschooler doing this – crafting together in companionable beading happiness.
Bend your covered pipe cleaners into a heart – probably a parent job, depending on your child's dexterity.
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Use fishing line or string to put a loop on your heart for hanging.
I hung a loop on each heart and then to hang them together I put the hanging loop through another heart and pushed the heart through its own hanging loop – see picture below to explain!
Each heart has its own hanging loop and I just used those to connect them – by hanging the hearts off each other from different places on each heart you can get them to hang ‘just so'. You'll have to experiment with your own batch of bead hearts!
Decorate the house with your new lovely hearts! Do you need a tree hung with heart ornaments maybe?
Our room needed something bright in this corner 🙂
This was beading fun for my preschooler and then the gave her the joy of seeing her work right alongside mama's displayed to brighten up our home.
Alissa Zorn is an author, and founder of the website Overthought This. She's a coach and cartoonist passionate about helping people overcome perfectionism and shame to build authentic, joyful lives. Alissa is certified through the International Coach Federation and got her Trauma-Informed Coaching certification from Moving the Human Spirit. She wrote Bounceback Parenting: A Field Guide for Creating Connection, Not Perfection, and is always following curiosity to find her next creative endeavor.