This project combines several of my favorite things: pasta art, silly puns, and upcycling materials! Alphabet pasta is a lot of fun to craft with and gives a really neat result, but since the noodles are so tiny, it can be tedious and a tricky one for little kids. For that reason, I stuck to using the letters just to spell out “pastably” instead of the entire message, but if you’re just making one epic pasta valentine vs a bunch of them, spelling out the entire message in pasta would be a really fun option!

• Alphabet pasta noodles (and other shapes)
• White glue
• Cardboard scraps
• Craft knife
• Ruler
• Cutting mat
• Pink or red paint
• Paintbrush
• Fine tip marker
• Pencil

Step 1
Use a ruler, craft knife, and cutting mat to cut the cardboard into small rectangles – these can be whatever size you like! I used these scrap pieces that were off-cuts from another project, so they aren’t all the exact same size, but that’s perfectly okay!

Step 2
Pout your alphabet pasta out onto a plate or shallow bowl. Sort through the letters until you find what you need to spell “PASTABLY” on each card.

Step 3
Arrange the pasta letters on the center of each cardboard square and secure in place with white glue. Let dry completely.

Step 4
Use a pencil to draw a heart around the “PASTABLY” and make sure to leave enough room to write out “I couldn’t” above and “love you more!” below.

Step 5
Time to paint! There are two ways to do this: the first option is to paint inside the lines of the heart, covering over the pasta letters. The second way is to paint outside of the heart, leaving the pasta letters unpainted. If you’re doing the second way, you can fill in the outside space with some macaroni noodles to emphasize the pasta pun – just glue the macaroni noodles down (or any other pasta shape) and let them dry before applying a coat of paint on top. Whichever way you choose, let the paint dry completely before moving onto the next step.

Step 6
Use a fine tip marker to write the rest of your message above the below the pasta letters so that it now says “I couldn’t PASTABLY love you more!”

Step 7
Write a custom message on the back of the card.

Happy crafting!