There’s a YouTube video posting tomorrow on my channel demonstrating how you can make your own custom hearts using free public domain images. The tutorial relies upon using Adobe Photoshop, which isn’t accessible to everyone or desirable to learn. If this describes you, I am going to show you how to easily create the same custom hearts without Photoshop — it just requires a little more hands-on work!

First, you’ll need a heart template, which can honestly be found for free on the internet, but I also have one here, in case you are interested. Right-click on the images below to save to your device.

Once it’s saved, you can print the template and cut it out. I recommend printing on heavy cardstock so it doesn’t flop around on you when you are tracing it.

Next, you need to determine what paper you are going to use for your hearts. I have added the three red-themed images I used in my heart triplet from my video. You can right-click on each of them to save and print.

I did not perform any color correcting on these images. If you’d like to enhance it in Google Docs, see this video on how I make color adjustments in Google Docs. I printed mine on regular cardstock using the premium setting on my printer.

Now it’s time to trace your hearts! I used the medium sized heart from my template above, but you can use whichever size fits your application best. You can also be as fussy as you want with the layout of your hearts. I tried to center my hearts based on the layout in my video, but because we are shifting from a digital to analog process, it won’t ever be exactly the same, but it’s close!

Once your hearts are traced, you can cut each traced heart out using scissors. I try to trace my pencil lightly around the template, but if there is any stray pencil mark, I just erase it after it’s cut out.

If you would like connected hearts like my triplet heart from my YouTube video, you will have to connect them manually with little pieces of paper on the back side.

You can now repeat the process so each white back is covered with a paper heart. Now you have a foldable heart triplet!

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P.S. As a Valentine’s Day gift to you, I am also including the digital file I created in my video here for you to download and use. Simply right-click and save to your device. Please spread the love!