Print Hearts With a Cardboard Tube
Squash a kitchen roll tube into a heart shape and use it as a stamp. One tube makes forty hearts.
Bend a cardboard tube into a heart shape and use it as a printing stamp for cards and wrapping paper. Needs a tube and paint. Suits ages 2 to 7.
The short version
- Tape across the tube or the heart shape springs open.
- Thin layer of paint, not a puddle.
- One tube prints for as long as it stays dry.
- Age
- Ages 2–7
- Prep
- 2 min
- Play time
- 20 min
- Mess
- Medium
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Where
- Indoor
Why kids love this
One squash of the tube and it is a heart — the transformation is instant and slightly magic. Stamping is endlessly repeatable, so a child who is not interested in drawing will happily print forty hearts.
What you'll need
- A cardboard tube from kitchen roll or toilet roll
- Washable paint
- A plate or tray for the paint
- Paper, card or a plain paper bag
- Sticky tape
Before you start
Squash the tube flat, then push one end inwards to make the dip at the top of a heart. Hold it there and put a piece of tape across the middle to keep the shape. That is the whole preparation, and it takes about thirty seconds.
How to do it
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Flatten the tube with your hand.
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Push the middle of one end down to make the V of the heart.
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Tape across the tube to hold the shape.
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Pour a thin layer of paint onto a plate.
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Dip the shaped end of the tube into the paint.
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Press it onto the paper. Press straight down and lift straight up.
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Repeat all over the paper.
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Make a second tube in a different colour if you want two at once.
Make it easier
One colour, big paper, and no attempt at neatness. A two-year-old will print on top of their own prints and that is fine.
Make it harder
Ask for a pattern — a row of hearts all the same distance apart — or a picture built out of heart prints.
Other ways to play it
- Print onto a plain paper bag to make a gift bag.
- Print a border round the edge of a card.
- Overlap two colours to see what happens where they cross.
- Make a flower by printing five hearts in a ring.
- Print onto a plain cotton bag with fabric paint.
How it changes by age
- Two: one colour, big paper, complete freedom.
- Three to four: cards for specific people.
- Five and up: patterns, borders, and printing on fabric.
What they're learning
Pressing straight down and lifting straight up is a controlled movement that visibly improves over the first few prints. Making something for a particular person is a small piece of thinking about somebody else, which is worth as much as the craft.
Clearing up
The tube goes in the recycling when you are finished. Everything else wipes.