Valentine’s Day craft with dogs

Our daycare dogs are doing crafts and pictures this week for their parents to show their love.

If you would like to create this craft with your own dog, we have some tips for you. We bought pre-cut 6-inch hearts in bulk online, so we didn’t need to cut them all. If you are only doing one or two, this may not be worth it for you to do. Cut out a 6 inch heart from red or pink construction paper or card stock. Put one heart on a clipboard, just barely clipping the top of the heart. Don’t write anything on it yet. Sometimes the dogs move at the last second, so the paw prints may not end up exactly where you planned.

For the paint, we use children’s craft paint. We chose black paint, so it would really contrast against the paper, but you could also use red on pink hearts. We paint the paw pads with a spongy paintbrush instead of dipping the paw pad into the paint. This will make a much cleaner paw print. You can also buy a mess-less ink pad to use. Press the heart/clipboard against the bottom of the foot. This is much easier if you have someone holding the dog up for you. For big dogs, they can just hold up the front half of the body. If you have a dog who is extra nervous, you can do a back paw while the holder gives yummy treats to distract them. As you can see in the picture, smaller dogs may do both paws, but you will need to do just one for the big guys.

Use a Sharpie to fill in the text, and allow to dry. If you want to mark the date on the back, either do this before the painting is done, or wait at least until the next day to flip it over and write. Dry time will vary.