Get in the spirit of love with these eco-friendly DIY Valentine’s Day decorations — and impress your loved one with your thoughtful handiwork.
Eco-friendly DIY Valentine’s Day decorations are budget-friendly and easy to create. Although Valentine’s Day is generally a day for expressing love to your friends, family, or partners, we might as well take this day to show some love to our planet too.
That can easily be done by swapping non-recyclable plastic decorations for eco-friendly alternatives or by reusing decorations year after year. There are plenty of sustainable DIY valentines decorations to express your creativity and make this Valentine’s Day one for the books.
1. DIY Valentine’s Decorations: Festive Foods
Decorating with delicious and festive foods to snack on, like heart-shaped macarons does not only spare you the process of cleaning up, it shows your loved ones how much effort you’ve put into DIY Valentine’s decoration this year.
You don’t have to make the Parisian treat, you can basically shape any cookies or food into a heart. How about turning these vegan snowball cookies or peppermint chocolate cookies into Valentine’s snacks? If you’re not into baking, make sure to check with your local bakeries in advance — there’s a good chance they have some Valentine’s Day goodies available for you on the 14th of February.
2. Decorate with DIY Candles
Candles are undoubtedly one of the most popular and well-liked decorations used to create a cozy and romantic atmosphere. To keep it eco-friendly this year, make DIY scented candles or try your hand at soy candles. Both are easy to make and a much more sustainable alternative to store-bought candles.
3. Paint Mason Jars
If you have any leftover jars, a perfect way to upcycle them is turning them into cute Valentine’s-themed mason jars. All you need is an old jar, a ribbon to tie around if desired, and of course paint. If you want to turn this into an activity with your kids, you could try homemade finger paint. Otherwise, your best picks would be acrylic paint, chalk paint, or glass paint.
If you choose to use glitter, make sure to check what the glitter is made of and choose biodegradable products. You can use the final result as little flower vases, containers for snacks and cutlery, or even as a lantern for your candles!
4. Make Heart-Shaped Wreath
You may know wreaths or natural garlands from Christmas or Thanksgiving, but the arrangement of flowers, leaves, or stems is also beautiful for DIY Valentine’s Day decorations. You could dry and preserve flowers for it, dry rose hips, or use greenery like holly leaves, pine, ivy, or mistletoe to make a heart-shaped wreath. Besides that, make sure to have a roll of wire on hand to attach the greenery.
5. Cookie Cutter Wind Chimes
Do you have any heart or angel-shaped cookie cutters at home from the Christmas season? Perfect, because with this DIY valentines decoration, you’ll reuse them and make a wind chime from it! You’ll need cookie cutters, twine, and wire. Use a 10 to 12-inch wire to shape a heart.
Now cut three lengths of twine and attach the cookie cutters to each twine by knotting above and below and making sure the hearts are facing the right direction. Attach the twines with hearts to the heart-shaped wire from the beginning and voilà, your Valentine-themed wind chime is ready to be hung up.
6. DIY Valentine’s Decorations: Cross Stitching
Cross stitching is a type of embroidery that uses little crosses to create a particular pattern and is often used for tablecloths, dishcloths, or table linens. To start cross-stitching, you gather the following supplies:
- fabric
- thread
- needle
- scissors
- pattern
Once you have your supplies ready, you can find plenty of beginner-friendly tutorials online to get started. How about attempting yourself at a cross-stitched heart or the initial of your Valentine’s date?
7. Make a Cute Heart Garland
Garlands are often made from plastic and tossed away after being used just once. A timeless and adorable knitted heart garland is an alternative to store-bought that you’ll absolutely want to use again next year. Make sure to use vegan wool for it when possible.
8. Make a Garland From a Card Deck
Speaking of garlands, there’s another fun DIY Valentine’s decoration that you may want to try out. If you have an old card deck, pick all the heart cards and create holes using a hole punch. Thread the cards together using ribbon or twine and you’re left with a creative and unique garland for Valentine’s Day celebrations.
9. Decorate With Houseplants
While this one is more about rearranging than an actual DIY, houseplants are Valentine’s decorations worth mentioning. Flowers are often the obvious choice of decoration for Valentine’s Day, and they’re great, but there’s something about the simplicity of a houseplant that can create a romantic and sophisticated atmosphere too.
How about giving your houseplants the spotlight by placing them near the dinner table or a window front and sprucing them up by adding some ornaments or hearts to them? You may still have some decorations from previous years that you could reuse for this.
10. DIY Valentine’s Decorations: Pinecone Roses
Another great DIY Valentine’s decoration is pinecone roses. Just collect some pine cones on your next forest stroll, rinse them with water, and once they are dry again, paint them in your favorite colors! Unlike real flowers, these pine cone roses will last you throughout each and every Valentine’s Day.
11. Make a Wine Cork Heart
If you have plenty of used corks lying around at home, this cork heart is the perfect DIY Valentine’s decoration for you. All you need is a piece of wood to glue the corks to (check the local craft stores to find a heart-shaped piece of wood), a decent amount of corks depending on the size of the wood’s surface, and of course, some glue to attach them. While store-bought glue can be harmful to the environment and may give off toxic fumes, homemade glue is ideal, especially if you’re crafting this together with kids.
The procedure is simple. All you have to do is glue the corks on the piece of wood until the whole piece is covered. Make sure to apply some glue to the sides of the corks as well to secure them even better. If you want to hang this up, you also need a small hook that can be glued to the back of the wood and then hung up wherever you want to decorate!
12. Create a Romantic Atomsphere Through Lights
Much like candles, fairy lights or outdoor solar lights are often a must for Valentine’s Day decorations. To prevent having to purchase anything new, Valentine’s Day is the perfect occasion to recycle your Christmas lights. For an extra sustainable holiday celebration, stick to LED lights when possible to save energy.
13. Use Photos as Valentine’s Day Decorations
A simple DIY Valentine’s decoration that can also be used as a Valentine’s Day gift is a photo collage. If you are celebrating this Valentine’s Day with your partner, how about surprising them with some of the most beautiful pictures you two have together and bringing them all onto one huge piece of paper? You could also just decide on one or two quality images and frame them nicely.
14. Use Edible Flowers as Decoration
One sustainable way of incorporating flowers in your decorations is using edible flowers to sprinkle on top of appetizers, main dishes, cakes, desserts, drinks, coffee, or whatever else you serve during Valentine’s Day. You can either do your research beforehand and dry them yourselves or purchase them ready-to-serve.
15. Decorate With Geodes
If you’re looking for a challenging but unique way of finding your Valentine’s decorations for this year, check out geodes. They are rock structures with an internal cavity lined with mineral materials. Check out our guide on how to find geodes, and you might be rewarded with beautiful crystals to decorate with.
16. Make Sustainable Confetti From Natural Ingredients
While conventional confetti is a traditional and fun way to decorate, it is unfortunately anything but eco-friendly. Luckily you can easily turn it into “ecofetti” in many ways. One example of a DIY valentines decoration is replacing confetti with dried leaves as they are or giving them a twist by cutting them into small heart shapes.
17. DIY Valentine’s Decorations: Origami Hearts
Origami is the name for the Japanese art of folding paper into shapes and figures that can serve as decoration. Making DIY origami hearts takes little time but shows everyone that you’ve put effort into making this year’s Valentine’s decoration yourself.
18. Make Paper Stars
Not everything on Valentine’s Day has to be heart-shaped. Stars are just as beautiful and add to a passionate and idyllic atmosphere. Check out this easy tutorial for paper stars.
19. Give Felt Craft a Try
Felt is a fabric made from pressing wool or other textiles together with moisture or heat. You can perfectly use it to make a variety of DIY Valentine’s decoration projects such as cute little animals or other figures. Have a look at a local crafts shop or browse for some beginner kits online.
20. DIY Valentines Decorations for Kids
If you want to actively include your little ones in the process of decorating and at the same time give them some creative freedom and room to improve motor skills, making homemade playdough or salt dough ornaments is a perfect idea.
Once you’ve assisted them with making the playdough or salt dough and it is ready, let them form their own Valentine-themed objects and take the result as a surprise!
Read more:
- Picnic Date Ideas: Romantic Dining for Two
- Foolproof Peppermint Chocolate Cookies (Vegan)
- Learning Self-Love: How to be Good to Yourself and Why it Matters
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