Easy Valentine Bookmarks From Paint Sample Strips and Scrapbook Paper

It’s time to share our next short-cut, cute, cheap and easy Valentine’s Day idea!

How about exchanging with homemade bookmarks for your Valentine’s this year?

As I mom, I would LOVE this alternative – it’s not sugar, no food allergy issues and it’s useful! Now if you did want to add the candy flare too, you can also attach a sucker and have a “better than normal” valentine 🙂

Although we homeschool, our kids will be giving the scrapbook ones to their friends in our co-op.

The paint strip ones are ones I made for our kids. I would ask the store before you take them for this purpose, but they had no issues with it whatsoever and said I could have all I wanted. I still only grabbed 1 of 5 different reddish colors available. They also end up throwing tons of these away and so they are happy to give out. They don’t have to be red/pink anyway!

You can do this many ways! I made paint swatch ones for our kids to give to the 5 of them for Valentine’s Day using the Paint Swatch samples and ribbon I got for .50 a roll at Hobby Lobby! We are giving our kids a new book, pencil and these bookmarks for their Valentine’s Day gift from us! I like the paint sample strips one because it is sturdy and thick and doesn’t allow for the ribbon to “rip” through very easily!

Here’s the items you need for the paint sample bookmarks:

Paint Swatch Samples in Valentine colors (Pinks and Reds) from any store, including Walmart (Free). I picked up one of each reddish color, so each of mine are a slightly different shade.
Ribbon (I got a new roll at Hobby Lobby, it was 50% off .99)
Heart hole punch. You can buy these at the craft store for around $1 each. I actually have a whole set with many shapes that my brother gave to me for Christmas, but they are easy to find!

How to make:

It really doesn’t need instructions… but here we go –

Simply punch hearts down either side equally on each paint square.
Then punch a heart in the top
Insert an 8″ ribbon and tie a knot to secure
Then give them away!

They are really, really cute!

For another idea, you can use cardstock or Valentine themed scrapbook paper as both of these are thicker, making it less of a chance that your ribbon on the top will “rip” through the paper. From one 12×12 sheet of paper, you can get 16 bookmarks! To make 16 bookmarks, it will only cost $1 or less – in my case, it was FREE as I already had the ribbon, paper and punch!

These are the ones our kids are handing out at our homeschool co-op.

What you need:

12×12 sheet of themed paper (.20-.50 each sheet depending on sales and where you buy it)
Ribbon (I already had this one, but as you can see from the one above, you can get it cheap)
Heart hole punch (see explanation above) or just a regular hole punch since your paper has the Valentine theme
Paper cutter (optional). Don’t buy one for this purpose. You can use scissors, it will just take a bit more time 🙂

How to make:

Cut the 12×12 paper into 8 even strips by cutting every 1.5 inches

Then cut the strips in half at the 6 inch mark

Then use a heart-shaped or regular hole punch and punch a hole on the top of each.
Insert your 8 inch long ribbon and tie a knot to secure
Then you are ready to give them away!