Kids' Personalized Valentines

It's February! The lovely month of valentine cards, hearts, chocolate (oh wait, that's every month), and when my boys' favorite colors temporarily change from blue and green to red and pink (and more pink this year than ever!).

When I was growing up my family had a tradition of making valentine cards for each other. I still try to carry on that tradition, and I've even started getting the boys involved. But I quickly tire of the commercial cartoony valetines from the stores. Yes, they're inexpensive and easy, and even fun. But every now and then it's nice to do something more personal. With the baby due in a couple weeks I'm not making any promises about fancy cards this year. But I was quite pleased with what we did last year. I've been saving them to share with you:

Last year we made our own cards to print and send. First we started with a photo shoot. Five-year-old Alexander was great at doing all sorts of funny (and scary) poses, as well as sweet ones. Lincoln's pictures just came from photos we already had.

I made a letter-size template in Photoshop, and let Alexander go wild. At the same time I made it a learning experience, as he had to do the typing himself. He "drew" the hearts how he wanted and chose the sayings, pictures, and colors. He got quite creative. I made sure we had some sweet and normal ones to send to the grandparents, and let him send the silly ones to his cousins. (One of them asks, "What do you want for Christmas?" Yes, crazy and nonsensical, but it shows his personality.)

Lincoln's template was fairly uniform, but I did switch it up with four different pictures.

I had the valentines printed on cardstock, then I cut them up with my handy paper slicer. In the meantime I had also made a spreadsheet list of all the relatives and friends to send cards to (with Alexander's input, of course).

Alexander did almost all the hand writing himself using the list I had printed for him. He checked off each name after he wrote it. I was proud of him for doing such a big project.

Lincoln, not even two years old at the time, just scribbled on most of his cards while I wrote the names in for him. I had to make sure to place a new card in front of him every couple seconds, and even then we didn't get his cute scribbles on each card. But we got pretty close.

And now... I'm going to share a simple template with you. This is the one I used for Lincoln. Save it, print it, and paste your own pictures on top.

Pink Valentine Template - Here
Blue Valentine Template - Here

Enjoy!

Or, if you plan on making your own, here are some additional ideas:
-To save time: Have the child design just one card and duplicate it, making them all uniform.
-To save time: Make your own templates without involving the kids. They might still enjoy signing their names and addressing them, especially with their own picture on it.
-To save money: I don't have a color printer, and so the 8.5x11" color copies can get expensive when printing a lot. Try making the templates in 4x6" format and get them printed as photos for cheaper (Although the photos might be harder to write on).
-Just for fun: Make a space for drawing pictures. Or do what my friend did a few years ago and have the kids simply draw a picture, then duplicate and print that as the card.

By just modifying our existing template, my kids might send out valentines this year, after all.
Happy crafting!

P.S. I just added the "You might also like:" widget with hopes that it would link to related posts i.e. for this post have links to other valentine posts. But it seems more random than that, at least right now. So here's just an additional direct link to all my posts labeled "Valentines".

Links to more cute Valentine ideas and printables:

Candy bag toppers from I Am Mamma Hear Me Roar

Heartbreaker printable on MADE

Love Mail Valentines by Noodlehead

Love, Lily Lollipop holder valentine on Grosgrain

Homemade Christmas: Canvas Silhouettes (with Tutorial!)

Now that all the gifts have been opened I can share my Christmas projects with you! This year my sister Sadie and I had each other for family gifts.



I made each child a silhouette of themselves, and a combined one for my sister and her husband. After sending off the gifts I was nervous that the kids would be upset they weren't getting toys from me. I'm happy to say that I've only heard good reports, and even my brother in law seems to like them (and he's not a homemade gift kind of guy). What makes this gift fun is that it can really show the personality of each person.



Interested in making one yourself? Here's a quick tutorial:

Step 1: Taking or Finding Photos. As you can see, the pictures don't need to be super-high quality. For these I had my nieces and nephew do fun poses. I got some great action shots of my nephew and some cute poses from the baby, but nothing exciting from the older girl, who was not in the mood for pictures. So I looked back and found a cute picture of her playing in the mud in her swimsuit. Now THAT was a pose with personality! Since she loves wearing skirts I Photoshopped a skirt from a different picture onto the swimsuit one. Ta-da!





Step 2: Photoshopping(Optional). I wanted to see what the finished product would look like before I decided to proceed. So I used my eraser tool in Photoshop to crop around the whole picture to just the person. (It helps if the person is in front of a solid white background so you can use the Magic Wand tool.) Then I made the person a solid color and played around with the fonts until I had it the way I wanted:





Step 3: Printing and Cutting. Print your photo (or Photoshopped image) and cut out the image to make a stencil. I tried using both the white space background and the image as the stencil, but really it just depends on what colors you want for the foreground and background. (For the couple silhouette I actually used both stencils.) Use a small pair of scissors or an X-Acto knife for cutting. Print an extra copy that won't be cut to have on hand for reference, especially if it is a detailed image.



If you're using two people in different colors then cut out each person separately.


Step 4: Grab your Canvas. For the kids I used 8x10" canvases that can be hung straight on the wall. For the couple I found a thin flat 9x12" canvas to fit the frame I already had.

Step5: Stencil Painting. Place your stencil on the canvas. I just held the paper in place with my hand. (I wonder if freezer paper stenciling works on canvas? I'll try that next time.) Instead of mixing paints to get your colors, I suggest just picking a color straight from the paint tube. It just makes touch-ups easier. It's hard to match a mixed color after it's dry. I used acrylic craft paints from a craft store.

For this one I painted the background a solid color and left the person the white color of the canvas. Later I painted over her in cream, but since she was already white I didn't have to paint multiple coats. For the kids' silhouettes I had my own boys help me paint the whole canvas a solid color, then I used the stencil to paint the person on in white. I had to do a few coats since I was painting with a light color on top of a dark one.



If you're doing two people in different colors: let the first person dry, then use your 2nd person stencil:



Step 6: Touching-Up and Names. Touch up any little mess-ups you may have made and paint on the names. I chose to do this free-hand because making a stencil for all those little letters seemed much too tedious!




Step 7: Varnish. With acrylic craft paints you should really put some sort of finish on it. I like to use varnish with a satin finish (instead of gloss). You could also use Mod Podge.



And your done! Okay, maybe this wasn't as "quick" a tutorial as I expected, but hopefully it helps.

I put this one into a frame to make it more elegant, but mostly because I happened to already have a nice frame with no glass. The painting didn't need it! (I left the cardboard corners on the frame since the gift was taking a road trip to California).

Olive Kitchen Set and New Look!

I love this Santorini olive fabric. I hope my mom does, too, because that's what she got for her birthday. I made her two hanging kitchen towels, and since I was having fun I made a couple of reversible hot pads. I have a little fabric left over, so I'm hoping to make some for myself, as well.

The little white ball trim came from (curtains? A bed spread?) something I got at the thrift store, which I bought only for the trim. As soon as I got home I pulled out my handy dandy seam ripper and yanked the trim off that ugly fabric. It's cute on the towel, don't you think?

And speaking of Jack the Seam Ripper... I fixed up my blog! I've had a makeover in the making for a few months. That's one reason I haven't been posting much. I couldn't decide on the many slightly varying versions I made of the header. Finally I decided just to pick one. It's much better than before. My amazing, wonderful, brilliant brother Will made the seam ripper for me. It turned out even cooler than I hoped or imagined. I'm sure I'll keep fixing up the layout as time goes by, but I'm just glad to have something new, fresh and cute for now.

(By the way, can anyone see the favicon? I'm having trouble with it, as it only seems to show up in Chrome on my own computer.)

On the left are some of the other headers I was considering. I almost chose the one with the green rick rack but in the end decided to go for the chosen frame for it's retro look. My "about me" picture looks a little freaky, but it's kind of fun, too. It's from a picture of me at my sister-in-law's wedding this summer. So now I need some feedback: Which header do you like best? Do you have any suggestions for my blog layout? Are you having trouble seeing the images? You love the pot holders and towels so much you want to go visit my mom this instant so you can see them in person?

WK Character Magnets (and other stuff)

Completed Christmas 2008:

For the family Christmas present swap this past year I had my little brother, Will. He's a super talented guy who used to be a super talented kid who made a monthly comic book called WK Magazine (WK for his initials). As a teenager I had a paid subscription to his magazine, and also got a few of my friends to subscribe as well. Nowadays he's going to art school as a film major and I must say his short films are hilarious. And of course, his artwork is always treasured.

So for Christmas I decided to resurrect some classic old school WK characters, jazz them up a bit in Photoshop, and give them new life on my brother's refrigerator.


Here are some pictures of the originals

Completed April 2007:

A couple years ago for Will's birthday I took a painting he had made me for Christmas, scanned it, and made it into notecards and a t-shirt for him. They turned out looking a little on the cheesy side (especially the t-shirt) but I'm sure they could be made to look cool. I'm four years older than him, and not cool at all. But the whole point was to show him how much faith I have in him. If he wanted to be the next Paul Frank, he could.



I think he really liked the magnets. Maybe for his birthday I'll rehash the same pictures up into another hip item for his bachelor pad. Hmmm... coasters, perhaps?

"A" Bird Magnet and a Freebie

...Just don't get your hopes up too high just yet.

I made this with a letfover image I had printed for the zipper pull on the bird pencil case (last post). I had printed it in all different sizes since I didn't know which size I would need in the end. What to do with the leftover print? A magnet! Maybe I'll eventually print some in different colors and make a set. (Or I could even make a whole alphabet with different animals. I'll have to change this one to "B" of course...) For now, my sister will get one random bird magnet for her fridge.

It lookes spiffing on my fridge with these photo booth pictures, doesn't it? Yes, I did have to clear a bunch of other junk away so I could take an uncluttered picture. I'm sure you don't really want to know what my refrigerator looks like.

I already put a thumbnail of what the original file looks like, but here it is again for your viewing pleasure. I let the color bleed over the edges, but it's supposed to be cropped round for actual usage. I know that you, oh humble and possibly imaginary readers, will all want to use this little birdie for your own projects (I flatter myself), and I'm sure you know how to right-click and save the image, so here we go: The first freebie on my new craft blog! This freebie is for anyone who a) Likes birds, b) likes the letter "A" and c) would ever possibly have a personal use for this image. You can't say I ain't generous! Just please keep it to personal use only.

Hey! You could ALL have a random bird magnet for your fridges!


(P.S. Sorry the image is so small. That was the original size. I'll remember next time to work bigger.)