To make this reusable 3D bunting, you'll need corrugated cardboard, scissors, red and pink poster paint, two paintbrushes, a hole punch and some cotton string or twine.
Cut out matching pairs of heart shapes from the corrugated cardboard (try to use plain areas of card, without logos or printing which would show through the paint).
Paint the cardboard hearts - both sides, so you'll have to be patient as the first painted sides will take at least an hour to dry enough to turn over.
Once both sides are dry, cut a slot into each heart, to allow each heart to fit together with it's matching partner - one will need a slot at the top to halfway down, one will need a slot at the bottom to halfway up. See the above photo for clarification.
Slot the pairs of hearts together - this is tricky and you may need to cut the slots a little bigger to ensure a neat fit.
Use a hole punch to make one hole per 3D heart (see the picture below for clarification) and string the bunting together with brown twine (Nutscene in Scotland make lovely twine in a whole host of colours and deliver plastic-free).
Make sure that you loop the twine through the hole of each decoration (don't just push the twine through the hole once, but there's no need to knot it as the twine is nicely 'grippy'), or else they will all slide down to one end! It's best not to knot them into place, as once hung up you can tweak the gaps between the hearts (our bunting is made from a mix of small, medium and large so the gaps between them aren't all the same) - I just adjusted by eye once they were in situ on the wall.
Hang your Valentine's bunting somewhere to make you smile throughout February, then pack it away and bring it out next year, and the year after, and so on!
Why reusable cardboard bunting?
Well because of this...
Remember that sadly, any painted-on paper or card cannot be recycled (as the fibres have been weakened by the moisture and are no longer suitable for the recycling process). "Even if your children use a water-based paint, the paper still can’t be recycled. This is because it’s not the paint itself that makes the paper unrecyclable but the fact that the paper has been wet. Once paper or cardboard has been wet, the paper fibres are damaged and can't be recycled." This is on the Russell Richardson Recyling FAQs web page and is confirmed by the 'Yes Please / No Thanks' table on the Recycle Now website.