Heart Shaped Flower Pencils

Ok, so here's a little "how-to" or DIY or crafty thingamabob or whatever you want to call it that we made for Valentine's day.  I used foam that I bought at the Dollar Tree  & some I had leftover from last Valentine's Day.  I cut out a heart shape that I liked to use as my template & then used it to cut out the rest of my hearts which actually end up being the "petals" for the whole heart flower.  You can see below 2 cut out flowers- I took pics after all were made so these already have holes in them- just ignore that. ;)

Once I had 4 hearts of approximately the same size-ish, I then joined the bottoms of them together in sort of a four-leaf clover adaptation.  

Then, using a sharp pencil, I poked it through all four.  I'm sure there is a better tool to use for this but hey, it worked for me.  

After the holes are made, keeping them lined up, I then poked a pretty Valentine's day pencil through all the way up to the eraser.  That is the "stem" for the flower. :)

Voila!  Heart shaped flower pencils!  I'm guessing you could possibly stick pixy sticks in there as well but not sure how well they would hold up the foam.  I think I may have done them in the past with Pixy sticks but used paper instead of foam to make the hearts.  

Keep in mind that you have to make four hearts for each flower and I had to make over 60- that multiplied into over 240 hearts- I almost ran out of foam & my fingers hurt after all that cutting & poking.  We also put sparkly gem stickers on the one's for girls and the boys just got plain ones (oh well, they probably didn't get so excited about the flowers anywho).  

I'm sure there are endless variations to these & I would love to see some other ideas flow out of this one b/c I kinda got pooped at the end & ran out of creative thoughts aside from just making the flowers. 

 Let me know what you come up with for Valentine's Day!!

:):):)