Moana Heart of Te Fiti Tutorial - DIY Moana Party Favor Ideas (2024)

The Heart of Te Fiti is a pretty big deal in Moana, and what kiddo wouldn’t want to have his/her own? This tutorial shows how you can easily make a Moana Heart of Te Fiti with your child or as the perfect Moana party favors.

Is IT THE Heart of Tafiti or Te Fiti?

First, a bit of trivia… if you aren’t sure whether to spell it the Heart of Tafiti or Te Fiti, don’t feel bad. I had to look it up too! Before I made my watercolor “Heart of Te Fiti” gift cards, I did a bunch of Moana Te Fiti research, and learned that her name is spelled with an E, as in Heart of Te Fiti.

The Best Moana Party Favors

Since we’re still pretty Moana crazy over here, we recently had a big Moana birthday party, and of course we had to have the Heart of Te Fiti party favors for everyone — we also made cookies. I am excited to share the whole Moana party with you, but I’m still putting the finishing touches on that post. I just couldn’t wait to share our Moana party favors, and this tutorial for how to make Moana’s Heart of Te Fiti.

You can totally make these for your own Moana party favors — I promise they are a cinch! Just be sure to grab that free watercolor “Heart of Te Fiti” gift cards template through the email form at the end of this post.

Moana Heart of Te Fiti TUTORIAL

After we first watched the movie, my kids were dying to come up with a DIY Heart of Te Fiti. I saw these flat green marbles at the dollar store, and knew they would be perfect. I first tried using a white paint pen, but a green paint pen looked so much more realistic.

This DIY Heart of Te Fiti really couldn’t be simpler. In fact, after I taught them how, my kids drew most of the stones. We easily made enough for all our guests as Moana party favors.

Moana Heart of Te Fiti Supplies

To make the Heart of Te Fiti from Moana, you’ll need just a couple supplies:

• A bag of flat green glass pebbles vase filler (mine are from Dollar Tree). You will want the larger ones that are approximately 18-20mm.
• An ultra-fine green paint pen. It must be ULTRA fine, not just fine, so you can imitate the carved look of the Moana Heart of Te Fiti stone. The Elmers Painter brand green pen was the only ultra-fine one I could find.

Make THE MOANA Heart of Te Fiti

As is typical with a paint pen, you’ll need to first press the tip on scratch paper and get the paint flowing easily. Next practice making your Moana swirl a few times. I learned the key to make the perfect ocean-wave swirl was to begin by drawing a backward S, as shown in the photo below. Then starting from each end of the S, draw a spiraling line out to the edge of the pebble, being careful not to let the lines intersect.

Next go back and embellish between the swirl lines: add little carrot marks, diamond-shapes, slashes or dots similar to the carvings seen on the real deal in the Moana movie. After a quick lesson, I let my girls loose, and they had lots of fun coming up with different variations on the ocean-swirl carving. I think their DIY Heart of Te Fiti turned out fabulous!

Package The Heart of Te Fiti For Moana PARTY FAVORS

If you will be using the Heart of Te Fiti stones as Moana party favors, here’s how to package them up for giving. Of course let the painted stones dry completely before packaging.

• Download my “Heart of Te Fiti” free printable watercolor gift tags template, available via the email form below. Print that template on watercolor paper cut down to 8.5×11 inches so it will easily feed into your printer.
• Use a straight cutter or scissors to cut out each card.
• You will also need either small 3×5-inch zip-top bags or adhesive dots for adhering the Heart of Te Fiti stones.
• OPTIONAL: We added a bit of sand and a couple mini sea shells that I’d saved from some broken shell leis to give them a bit of that found-in-the-sea magic.

If you want to forego the whole sand and bag thing, you can also package up your Moana party favors very simply by attaching the stones with adhesive dots to the free printable “Heart of Te Fiti” Watercolor Gift tags (get the template via the email form below). I was actually originally planning to package my stones this way, but I couldn’t resist adding the sand and tiny sea shells, so I opted for the bags. Both ways are equally cute and a total #SupermomMoment!