365 Designs: Foam Fortune Cookie Valentines >

Foam Fortune Cookie Valentines


  One of my favorite times of year are the few months after the Holidays. January is the beginning of a brand new year with brand new possibilities. It's the start of a new time for creativity.  Valentine's Day is such a great holiday for making all sorts of crafts. It gives you the perfect opportunity to use all of those crafting supplies you still have hanging around from Christmas. You can finish up all of that left over bright red paint and gallon of shiny red glitter.
  For this Valentine's Day I wanted to do something other than traditional cards.  I came up with a new take on a recent craft I came across, the felt fortune cookie. I tried a few different materials from soft felt to hard felt - to glittered felt. The one thing I really liked and found looked the best was foam.  The foam I used is sold in sheets, similar to the felt, and comes in nearly every color. These fortune cookies are surprisingly easy to make once you grasp the basic shape. I included a printable strip of fortunes to cut out and fill your cookies with. Read on and I'll show you the easy steps to make these great little valentines.






  1. Sheets of Foam (about .50 a piece at Michaels)
  2. Chinese Valentine's containers ($1 each at Michaels)
  3. Decorative Flat floral wire ($3 at ACMoore *sign up for emails and you'll frequently get 50% off coupons right on your phone)
  4. circle cutter
  5. printer
  6. craft glue or a hot glue gun
  7. wire cutters
  To start off you're going to need to make a 4 1/2 inch circle template out of cardstock or flat cardboard. Using a circle cutter allows you to make perfect circles. I love this one from Martha Stewart Crafts. It takes some getting used to but it gives you perfectly precise circles.


 
  Trace the circle several times onto the foam using a similarly colored pencil. Next cut out the circles. With the scrap pieces of foam you'll need to cut out small strips about 1/2 inch wide  by 4 1/2 inches long. You'll use these to cover the ribbon wire.



  Cut 4 inch strips of wire. These will be slightly shorter than the diameter of the circle. Use white tacky glue or hot glue gun to adhere strips of wire to the foam across the center. Then cover wire with matching foam strip.




  After the glue has completely dried you can start to make your cookie shape. The best way to get the shape of the fortune cookie is to make it in a similar way that real fortune cookies are made. I figured this would be a little  hard to describe so I added a short video tutorial here. If you practice you'll quickly get the hang of it.
  First place a written 'fortune' lengthwise across the foam. (I have a free printable jpg image below which you can select and print out.) You want to fold the circle in half without creasing it. The broad ribbon wire provides the backbone for the cookie.  Make sure the rounded arcs of the foam meet and slightly overlap inward. This prevents the foam from folding down when you bend it back. Now you want to use your thumb, index and middle fingers to grab and bend the foam back so the two end points meet.


So that's it. Pretty simple right. 
I hope you had a great time making these. 
What's more is that they're easy enough to make with the entire family.
 It's sure to make someone's day quite special when they receive this unique handmade valentine.