Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, so if you’re still looking for a gift for your partner or potential love interest, keep reading. Also, keep reading if you just really love heart-and-flower-themed room decor.

There are a variety of ways you can put the very newspaper you’re holding (or any other old newspapers you may have lying around) to good use after you’ve read through it by making it into beautiful Valentine’s gifts and decorations. Nothing shows that you care quite like putting in the effort to make a gift yourself, and nothing screams “romance” quite like the Trinitonian.

I’ve compiled three of the cutest DIY newspaper Valentine ideas for your convenience. The tools you need to make the following projects can all be found in your very own room, or at least at the nearest Michael’s if you’re not an obsessive crafter like me. Well, enough said: time to get to work.

Card Materials:
– Newspaper
– Cardstock (of whatever color you’d like)
– Pencil
– Scissors
– Glue and/or tape
– Markers and/or paint
– Items for tracing/stencils (optional)
Steps:
1. These cards are really whatever you want to make them. You start by drawing shapes on the newspaper, either freehand, using stencils or with items like coins, small enough to fit onto the front of a card. These can be hearts, stars, circles or any other little geometric shapes you want.
2. Now you can cut these shapes out using craft punches or scissors. If you want to add a little color to the shapes, go over them with a thin layer of paint or marker before cutting them out.
3. Take the cut-out shapes and glue or tape them (though glue is recommended) to the front of a folded piece of cardstock in whichever arrangement feels right to you. Finish off with a heartfelt message inside. Like I said, these are super easy.
Hot tip: Get creative with your clippings. Cut out part of the crossword puzzle and fill in the spaces with a quick love note. Cut out a chunk of an article and make it into a blackout love poem.

Rose Materials:
– Newspaper
– Scissors
– Glue (preferably hot glue or craft glue)
Steps:
1. Take a newspaper and cut a circle out without unfolding it so that you get multiple circles of the same size. Don’t worry about the circles being perfectly round.
2. Lay down a circle and put a small dot of glue in the center. Layer another circle on top and put a dot of glue in the center of that circle. Continue until all circles are attached.
3. Take the top circle and gently scrunch it up. Take the next layer, and scrunch it around the top layer. Continue scrunching all the layers around each other one by one, and voila – a rose!
Hot tip: Vary the size of your flowers to create a visually interesting bouquet.

Garland Materials:
– Newspaper
– Scissors
– String (yarn or twine)
– Tape, glue or staples
– Hole punch (optional)
– Cardboard (optional)
Steps:
1. Draw however many hearts you want for your garland onto your newspaper. To make cutting them out easier, I’d recommend folding the paper in half where you want to draw the heart and just drawing half of it. To make your hearts more uniform, consider first cutting a heart or half-heart stencil out of some cardboard.
2. Cut the hearts out, flattening them out if you used the paper folding method.
3. Attach the hearts to a string cut to the length you want the garland to be. You can use a couple different methods for this, depending on your preference. You can staple or tape the hearts to the string from the back. If you have a hole punch, you can simply make a hole at the top of the heart and then string the heart through. You can also cut out small rectangles of newspaper and glue it to the back of the heart with the string in between.
4. Hang up your masterpiece.
Hot tip: Cut squares around the areas of the paper where you cut out hearts so that you can add to your garland with the reverse hearts or make another garland with them.

I hope you all enjoy these simple newspaper Valentine’s. If you make any of the crafts above, take a picture and direct message it to the Trinitonian Instagram (@trinitonian). We would love to see what you made. Happy Valentine’s!