It’s February, and valentines are next on the list to 3D print. In many elementary schools, students exchange valentines with their classmates. When preparing to print valentines for group exchanges, or when designing your own, it helps to keep a few things in mind. For successful school valentines, be sure to consider size, printability, and theme.
Valentine boxes, often called “mailboxes,” are also a fun family project. Here, I share the story of designing and 3D printing valentines with my own children for their elementary school classes. This became a seven-year project, and I cannot help but feel emotional as I reflect on its beginnings and anticipate its end.
The following guide will offer a practical look at 3D printed Valentine exchanges in elementary school settings. It documents each design by explaining how the idea came about, how it was printed at classroom scale, and how it worked once shared with students.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- About School Valentine Exchanges
- Our Designs by Year
- Valentine Boxes (Mailboxes)
- Final Thoughts
About School Valentine Exchanges
School Valentine exchanges are an elementary school tradition most commonly associated with the United States and Canada, where students bring valentines to share with every classmate. These are often store-bought cards or simple do-it-yourself items, such as handwritten notes, small paper crafts, stickers, or packaged treats. Classroom rules typically emphasize inclusivity, manageable size, and appropriate content. While Valentine’s Day is celebrated internationally, organized classroom exchanges are not universal and may look very different, or may not exist at all, in other education systems.
In our case, this tradition became a family project centered around 3D printing, using desktop 3D printers at home. What started as a simple effort to create valentines for my children’s elementary school classes gradually evolved into an annual routine. Over seven years, designing and printing classroom-friendly valentines became a shared tradition, shaped by school guidelines, time constraints, and lessons learned each year. That long-term experience forms the basis for the designs and observations shared throughout this guide.
Our Designs by Year
Over time, this project shifted from a one-off idea into a yearly tradition. By 2022, expectations were high and planning for Valentine’s Day started earlier each year. The goal became clear: create a new 3D printed school Valentine design annually throughout elementary school. Before moving from one idea to the next, a consistent set of design parameters emerged. Each Valentine needed to be original rather than downloaded, interactive rather than purely decorative, small enough to fit in classroom Valentine boxes, and easy to print in larger quantities without supports. Designs were kept single-color or limited to simple filament swaps to improve reliability and accessibility. Appeal needed to be gender neutral, and every design included a heart element to clearly signal its purpose as a Valentine.
All of the Valentine designs shown in this guide are available within my Hearts Collection on Cults. The collection brings the models together in one place for easy reference and reuse, while the sections below document how each design was used and adapted in a classroom context.
2020: Heart Magnets
In early 2020, with Valentine’s Day approaching, my son was in kindergarten and my daughter was in second grade. In their classes, each student brought a valentine for every classmate (and the teacher). Most school valentines were simple paper cards, often business-card-sized, with popular characters and short messages. Some students also included candy. We decided to 3D print valentines that year and made Heart Magnets. They were a hit. Students loved them and immediately treated them as something special. At the time, desktop 3D printing was far less common than it is today, and this was the first time I seriously tried producing one design in larger quantities.
Print and Photo: Abby Brown
The magnets were so well-received that I kept printing them in different colors and eventually made enough for every student in the school. After Valentine’s Day had passed, late February and early March of 2020 were stressful and uncertain, especially in schools, as families and staff were worried about the emerging COVID-19 situation. It felt clear that people needed something small and positive. After seeing the response at the elementary school, I started printing Heart Magnets for my own students and for staff members at the high school where I teach, carrying a box and handing them out as I walked around campus. Each magnet reliably brought a smile.
I honestly do not know how many Heart Magnets I printed that year. Even now, years later, many teachers and staff members still have them displayed quietly in classrooms and workspaces. Whenever I print one today, I am reminded how much joy a simple, small print can bring, especially when people need it most.
2021: Heart Alien Tiny Tessellation
When Valentine’s Day rolled around again in 2021, my kids were fortunate that they had an in-person school setting and an opportunity to exchange valentines in class. That summer we had been designing some tessellations for 3D printing and my daughter wanted to make some for her classmates. I use Fusion to create them from scratch, and we played with curves until my daughter saw this one as an “alien.” She asked for it to have a heart in the middle and our “Heart Alien Tiny Tessellation” was born. Shown in the photo are all the tiles together that we printed for her classmates. We even designed a little box that holds a small set so that we could have a tidy, tiny, completely 3D printed package for each student.
One of the joys of this project as a 3D printing hobbyist was printing so many of the tiles and taking advantage of the features of my MakerGear M3-ID printer. This was the only 3D printer I had at the time. For this project, we used single-extrusion, dual extrusion for the box lid, and the duplication mode. It was certainly an opportunity to flex my 3D printing muscles!
2022: Valentine Keychains
For five more years, we strived to meet our goal for making school valentines. I involved my children throughout the design process for each one. I still have my daughter’s original sketches for some of our “Valentine Keychain” ideas in 2022. To help keep the keychains “gender neutral,” we printed them in a variety of colors.
Print and Photo: Abby Brown
The finished keychains proved to be a good balance between personalization and practicality. They are small, durable, and easy to print in quantity, while still allowing for variation through color and simple messages. As classroom Valentines, the keychains worked well because they felt personal without being fragile or overly complex, reinforcing the importance of keeping designs simple, inclusive, and reliable at the classroom scale.
2023: Heart Spinners (Pencil Toppers)
In 2023, I challenged myself with my first print-in-place, articulated design when we made the “Heart Spinners Pencil Toppers.” These turned into quite a project since we adapted them to keychains and various other fidgets, and we made a similar set of Star Spinners. Each student that year received a pencil as part of their valentine. The spinning pencil toppers are fun!
The heart spinners became an important turning point for our school Valentine designs. Starting as a simple print-in-place pencil topper, they ended up working well in several different forms, including keychains and other small fidgets. Their success showed us how much students enjoyed interactive designs and reinforced the value of creating classroom Valentines that are fun.
2024: Heart Maze
After the success of the pencil toppers, I really didn’t know whether we could do it again, and I started brainstorming around Thanksgiving, looking for inspiration whenever we were out and about. In a museum gift shop, I saw a toy that reminded me of a handheld ball tilt game I had. This gave me the idea that we could allow for a small ball and make handheld mazes!
Print and Photo: Abby Brown
The “Heart Mazes” were an interesting project that included a lot of prototyping and modifications to get things to look, feel, and work just right. For example, for the two-layer maze, we quickly learned there needed to be a way to prevent the ball from dropping to the bottom layer immediately upon completion of the top maze. It took a few iterations to get to the little heart bumpers. These were also interesting experiments with bridging during printing. The hidden maze inside the bottom layer is the same as the one on the top, and the walls of the maze act as support for the top layers.
The “Heart Maze” is featured in the guide Valentine’s Day 3D Print Ideas and Gifts: Decorative and Functional, by Richard Hirst.
2025: Silly Slang Heart Puzzles
Heading into 2025, my Prusa XL was still feeling new, and I was very tempted to create a multi-color design. However, maintaining my goal of only single filament swaps for color changes won out and guided the work on our “Silly Slang Heart Puzzles.” The Prusa XL certainly came into play, however, with printing the puzzles in batches.
It really felt like a little workshop with both single-color and multi-color machines in the mix. The 3D printing challenge for the puzzles fell into the category of “easily printable.” On my first try of cutting up the shape to make puzzle pieces, too many pieces had tiny bits of the top color that did not print well nor look good. Therefore, for each puzzle, I was very deliberate when drawing lines to make the cuts for pieces. If you look closely, you will see that each part of the lettering that is printed on top is a significant size for printing well.
2026: Triple Heart Fidget Spinner
Now it’s 2026 and my son’s last Valentine’s Day exchange with his class before graduating sixth grade. He really wanted to make some kind of fidget, but I still do not have much experience designing articulated and mechanical models. This year, we browsed my own files for inspiration and found two recent designs: Game Spinner and Stack Fidget. Using the central post from the Stack Fidget and the thick spinning model and washer concept from the Game Spinner, our “Triple Heart Fidget Spinner” quickly became the vision.
Print and Photo: Abby Brown
Before we had started on the Valentine’s project, we had recently pulled out my box of Protopasta sample coils from when I was receiving their Endless PLA subscription. Among the samples there were six 50-gram coils of their Thermochromic line of filament in different colors. This worked out to be just enough for printing all the posts and caps for my son’s classmates. We also have a spool of Hatchbox Temperature Color Changing PLA that worked well for the middle spinning hearts. This way, the spinners change colors from warmth when handling them. We are sure his friends will love these!
Valentine Boxes (Mailboxes)
When the students exchange valentines in class, they arrive with a box or container to collect their valentines. When I was a child, we simply used brown paper lunch sacks. Nowadays, students may bring decorative or themed boxes to enhance the experience or show off creative skills. My own kids have made some fun boxes over the years, and 3D printing has been a part of it.
In 2022, my kids borrowed some ideas from the internet and put their own spin on the designs. My son loved the idea of bringing a popcorn bucket to Valentine’s Day. The top part that holds the popcorn was 3D printed in clear filament with my Prusa MK3S. I don’t think the popcorn made it back home. Meanwhile, my daughter wanted to make a camera for Valentine’s Day. For her box, we printed the cylinders for the inside and outside of the lens and the button on top.
The next year, we made fully 3D printed Valentine boxes. My son’s “School Valentine Box” was based on his idea that he wanted a heart standing on its point with the box opening at the top. We then modified the box with some line art to make the “Lines Crossed Heart Box” design that my daughter colored with markers. Both models are available on Cults3D in Hearts collection.
Final Thoughts
I am waxing nostalgic and find it bittersweet to finish printing and posting the new “Triple Heart Fidget Spinner” that I designed with my son. He is thrilled with our design, and we both feel quite clever about printing it for his classmates in temperature-changing filament colors. However, I am sentimental as it is the last of the elementary school valentines that we will make for my children and their classmates. As my son looks forward to middle school and my daughter to high school, we realize that these upcoming weeks mark the end of an era for our family. Throughout the Valentine project, we maintained the “rules” and parameters that we set for ourselves and are proud of what we achieved! I am eager to see what projects the next era will bring.
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