How to Make Paper Heart Animals

Enjoy this fast and easy Valentine’s Day project with your entire family. To make a variety of adorable heart animals, you need little more than colorful construction paper, scissors, google eyes, and glue. You may want a few other basic craft supplies, depending on what kind of animal you want to make.

I would suggest letting the kids experiment with different shapes and different sizes of heart. The easiest way to cut out a symmetrical heart shape is to fold a piece of paper in half and cut half a heart shape, with the center of the heart being on the fold.

You can use my heart animals as inspiration and then encourage them to use their imagination and create any sort of creature they want. The finished animals can be used as Valentines by simply writing a message on them somewhere.

How I Made This Heart Monkey

I started out by cutting an oval from brown construction paper to be the monkey’s body. Using the brown paper, I also cut 2 small circles to be the ears and a tail. Out of beige construction paper, I cut out 3 hearts — a larger one for the face and two small ones for the inside of the ears.

Glue the larger heart near the top of the brown oval. Glue the small hearts on top of the brown circles. Use the picture as a guide to glue the ears to the back side of the oval, on either side of where the face is. Glue the tail to the back of the oval. Finish it off by gluing on two google eyes and draw on a mouth and nostrils using a marker.

How I Made This Heart Mouse

This mouse was made out of four hearts and two small circles. You need one larger heart to be the body, a heart almost half that size for the head, and two even smaller hearts for the arms. If you like, you can cut out two smaller hearts to be make feet for your mouse.

Flip the largest heart upside down. Glue the arm hearts in place. Glue the head heart to it so the points are overlapping. Glue the two small circles in the humps in the head so they look like ears.

Now you can add more details to your mouse. Glue on two google eyes. I made whiskers for my mouse using a short piece of embroidery floss that I separated the strands on. I glued the whiskers to the point on the bottom of the head heart and then glued a small, red pom-pom on top of it. To make the tail, I cut 3 pieces of embroidery floss that were about 6-inches long. I braided the three together and tied a knot near each end. I attached it to the backside of the mouse using glue.

How I Made This Heart Owl

I think this little heart owl is too cute to resist, how about you? To make one for yourself, start out by cutting a larger heart for the body. You then need to cut out 3 small hearts — two for the feet and one for the beak.

Lay the large heart upside down on your table. Fold down the point of the heart, about 1- to 2-inches. Glue the tip in place. Glue the beak heart over the point of the large heart. Glue on two google eyes so they cover the top humps of the beak a little bit. Glue the two feet under the bottom edge of the owl body. For a nice finishing touch, you can glue two small feathers to the owl’s head.

How I Made This Heart Penguin

This may be the simplest of my 4 heart animals, and also my favorite! Start out with a larger oval, like with the monkey. Cut a taller, skinny heart out of white paper and glue it to the center of the oval. Cut 2 small hearts out of orange paper and glue them in place to be the feet. Cut a little smaller heart out for the beak. Glue it in place and top it off with two google eyes.

If you are looking for inspiration for even more animals, check out these: