Heart Animal Valentines - Zebra Card DIY

We love Heart Animal Valentines! Why? Because Hearts + Valentines make our hearts swoon. It always amazes me how creative people can be with a simple heart. My daughters favorite animal is a Zebra, so we thought we’d try making a heart animal that looks like a zebra.

The first thing that came to mind when I heard the words ‘zebra’ and ‘hearts’ was this adorable Unicorn Heart Bookmark from my friend Gina over on Willowday. However, when I thought about the stripes I immediately thought of watercolor resist, so we got to work on figuring out how to make a cute heart zebra, which we did below.

Because I want to make it easy for you I’ve made you a printable. And if you’d like to sign up to our email list, where we send fun, crafty and creative ideas, we’ll send our Zebra Heart Template printable over as a ‘Thank You’ when you enter your name and email below.

Zebra Heart Animal Supplies:

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Watercolor Paper
Watercolors
Paint Brushes
White Crayon or White Oil Pastel
Scissors
Pencil
Black Marker
Glue
Zebra Heart Template – If you enter your name and email below to sign up for our mailing list then I’ll send you this free template as a Thank You.

Make It – Zebra Heart Animal Valentine:

1. Firstly, print out your Zebra Heart Template. After that, cut out all the pieces from the template, then trace them onto some watercolor paper and cut them out. This should leave you with a heart, an ear, an eye and a mane.

2. Next, we’re going to make the zebra heart body. To do this turn your heart upside down and with your white crayon or oil pastel draw a curved line for the snout and a dot for the nostril. Make sure to press down hard so you create a good waxy layer on top of the paper, this will stop the watercolor from going through. After that, you can draw some zebra stripes going up & down all across the heart.

Because little ones sometimes don’t press down to hard with their crayons, I usually try to go over their lines again to make sure they pressed hard enough.

3. Next you’re going to paint over the whole heart with black paint. I say black paint, but honestly it can be whatever color they like, my daughter, for example, used purple for her zebra. For this step make sure your paintbrush is nice and saturated with the watercolor paint, then, using 1-2 strokes per area, paint over the heart. However, be careful not to paint over one area too much because the paint can sometimes seep into the waxy crayon part. But, have no fear, the paint can usually be rubbed off or salvaged with a little help from an adult.

Haven’t grabbed your template yet? If you enter your name and email below to sign up for our mailing list then I’ll send you our free Zebra template as a Thank You.

4. Now onto the second painting part of the project, the background of the card. For this part you’ll want to fold a sheet of water color paper in half and trim it to about 4″x 6″. Set this down in a landscape position, so the fold is at the top, and paint it any way you want. Just before we started painting we talked about sunsets, rainbows and safari landscapes.

5. While your paint is drying it’s time to make your eye and ear. To do this take a black marker and draw a medium sized dot towards one of the edges of the eye. Next, paint or use a pink marker to color the inside of the ear.

6. Next, it’s time to practice those scissor skills! To do this cut out your mane and cut slits half way down all along one side. For littles I draw a line across the paper to show them where to stop, and sometimes make the first cut so they can see which direction they need to cut in, and how far to cut down. While you’re cutting also cut out a little strip for our zebra’s mouth.
Heart Animal Zebra cut mane

7. Finally we’re going to glue everything together. Firstly, glue the eye, the ear and the mouth onto the heart as pictured below. Then glue the mane to the back of the heart. Lastly glue the whole heart zebra onto your card and you’re done!
Zebra Heart Animal Card with *FREE PRINTABLE* #zebra #zebracraft #heartanimal

Check out some of our other heart animal zebras below, and if you’d like to add a catchy pun to your card you could write something like “I’m wild about you!” or “Would Zoo Be Mine?” or even “You knock my stripes off!”

TAG US IN YOUR ZEBRA HEART CREATIONS:

We love how projects change with different creative minds, and would love to see how yours turned out! So be sure to tag @creatingcreatives on Instagram or @creatingcreativeskids on Facebook for a chance to be featured.