DIY Fun and Colorful Valentine Art

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Are you looking for something fun and unique to make for Valentine’s Day? This heart-themed art, made from Jenga blocks I found at the thrift store, is easy to make and will look so cute in your home!

I bought two bags of Jenga blocks at the Goodwill outlet almost a year ago. I had a couple of ideas for how I was going to use them, but really, just thought the nice pieces of wood could come in handy for a DIY project or craft of some sort. If you have an old Jenga game laying around or find some at the thrift store, this is a fun way to use them!

Months went by and the blocks were just sitting in a box in our basement. I thought about making something with them a few times, but just never really got the inspiration I needed. I am part of a DIY group on Instagram, though, and needed to come up with a project to share in February. I started planning what I wanted to do, based on Valentine’s Day. Well…I wasn’t thinking of when our share is going to fall in the month and when Valentine’s Day is because this project will be too late if I wait to share. So, I’m sharing it early and will have to come up with something else for the group share later in the month. Oops! My mistake is your gain.

I found an inspiration photo on Pinterest that was my jumping off point for this project. I forgot to save the source, though, so I’m not going to share the photo here—that wouldn’t be right to do. Basically, though, the piece of art was what looked like rows of wooden blocks glued together and individual colorful hearts painted on the ends of each of the blocks. It was so cute, and I knew I could do something similar with the Jenga blocks! The result isn’t exactly the same, but I love how mine turned out and it actually works better with my color scheme and decorating style.

To start out, I laid out all the blocks that I had into a square(ish) shape. If any of the blocks had rough sides or didn’t look nice, I turned them over, so the best side was facing up. Once I had the design laid out (I had three blocks left that didn’t fit), I started hot gluing them together. I did one row at a time, making sure that they were flush and laid flat. When I finished gluing the blocks, I had six rows to glue together.

Here’s where my usual luck comes in…

I was so careful when gluing all the blocks together and they looked great! When I glued the rows together, though, it became clear that they weren’t all going to line up the way they seemed to when they were laid out on the table. I think part of this was because the blocks aren’t perfect—I think there was some warping and curves. Also, the hot glue made it so the blocks couldn’t fit perfectly together. No matter. I ended up with a piece of wood, that looked like my inspiration photo, and that I could paint on!

My next step was to cut out a stencil I could use to trace the hearts I wanted to eventually paint on the board. If you’re a better artist than I am, you could totally free hand this part, but I knew it would be a disaster, so the stencil came in very handy. Based on the six rows of blocks, I broke down the sign into three horizontal sections. I measured the height of the three rows and the width. I was able to fit three hearts on each row—a total of nine hearts on the whole sign.

Tracing the hearts was pretty easy, just tedious. I decided about halfway through, though, that I could have benefitted from a thicker stencil. I think next time I will trace onto cardboard!

Once the hearts were traced onto the board, it was time to paint! I used only what I had on hand for this project, so that meant I was limited to whatever acrylic paints I had in my craft stash. I had a few shades of pink (perfect for Valentine’s Day), an orange, and a reddish purple. I wanted a bit of an ombre effect starting at the top left of the sign and progressing each heart to the bottom right of the sign.You can find the acrylic paint I used from Colorshot HERE.

I’m not a trained artist, so color blending was a little tougher than I thought it would be. I ended up really loving how the colors turned out, though! If you’re not comfortable with mixing colors, you could do one color for each row or just a fun mix of colors.

I tried to take my time painting the hearts. There wasn’t any way to fix mistakes if I went outside of the lines, since I was painting on wood, so I went slowly and was as careful as I could be. One trick I’ve found when painting edges of anything is to hold my breath as I paint. It helps my hand to be steadier than it normally would be.

I love how this DIY Valentine’s Day project turned out! It adds the perfect bit of color to this little accent table and looks great with some of my vintage glassware. You could easily add D-rings to the back of the sign, if you want to hang it. I think it looks great as is, just leaning against the wall. Also, I had the thought that if you don’t put hangers on it, you could put a different design on the backside and then it would be dual purpose décor.

I hope this little project encourages you to look outside the (game) box when it comes to buying things at the thrift store and what you can do with them. Whether you love thrifting or want to get into it, you can find tons more inspirationHERE!

I also share weekly thrifting trips on Instagram and save them all to theBLOG. You can watch thrifting videos and get tons of ideas—binging to your heart’s content!

If you decide to try your hand at this project, or even something similar, I would love to see! Share a picture in your Instagram story and tag me—you can find me on Instagram at @hilaryprall.