DIY Valentine's Day Matching Game

I spent all Monday with my 5 little cousins, and I know they're looking forward to Valentine's Day just as much as I am.  When I visited them last week, they were already decorating their entire first floor with big hearts, red garland, and the cutest ribbon & heart banner I've seen!

I wanted to come up with another crafty project to keep them busy, so I came up with  
Valentine's Day Matching Game

also commonly known as "Memory"

So I must confess, the game pictured is not the exact version we made...

Who has time to take lots of pictures while watching over 5 kids?!

A box to keep your "cards" in is necessary!
I found this one at the dollar store.

Ok, so here are the only supplies you'll need for this easy DIY project:

1. 2 identical packs of stickers (these were from the Dollar Tree!) 
2. At least 2 pieces of SOLID card stock paper* 
3. At least 2 pieces of printed, decorated paper*
4. Glue stick 
5. Large heart punch like this one
6. A box or other container to hold your playing cards
7. Scissors*

*If making with little ones, I recommend buying more than 2 pieces of card stock and 2 pieces of printed paper.  Their favorite part will be punching out the hearts, and they won't be focusing on paper conservation!

*You'll need scissors to trim the card stock/printed paper in order to punch out more hearts from the center, and you might need them to trim any sticker that sticks out over the edges.

Easy Instructions

1. Decide how many hearts you need by counting the number of stickers you'll be using. 
2. Punch out that number of hearts in both the card stock, and printed paper.3. Using your glue stick, attach your card stock hearts to your printed hearts to make the cards.
(Make sure to line them up the best you can!)4. Apply stickers to the center of the blank side of the cards.
Make sure every card has a match!

To Play

• Randomly spread out cards, face side down.  You can line them up in rows, or to make things a little more challenging, spread them out in a messy circle.
• Taking turns, each person flips over 2 cards...attempting to match the first card to the second.
• If the 2 cards flipped over do not match, the player turns them back over in the same spot they were in.  As each card is turned over, the players will try to remember where they are.

• When a player gets a match, they take those cards.  
• The person who has the most matches at the end of the game, wins!

Here are some iPhone pics of the game we made on Monday

I bought Disney stickers because this family lives, eats, and breathes Disney :)
I highly recommend finding stickers of things your kids will LOVE.  It takes the game playing to a whole new level ;).

I found these at Hobby Lobby.

We didn't get to decorating the box, but our plan was to paint it and/or decoupage it.

And this is just one of the many games we played :)

Thanks for reading!

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