Homemade Valentines

We have a February tradition at our house in that we like to make our own Valentines. There’s something about the cold winter months, creating with the kids and enjoying a little homemade over store-bought that keeps us doing this year after year.

This year was fun for me because our Wendy (7) has really been taking an interest in all that stamping I’m doing. In hindsight, I don’t know if this was such a good idea after all because now the little upstart wants my job – to say she’s completely hooked is an understatement.

But I digress.

After Wendy was able to fit me into her social schedule, we gather some supplies: Some 3” ziplocks, Valentine M&M’s, the Zoology set, white cardstock, patterned paper and assorted inks.

Then we began. Chocolate first, I always say. We worked together (the best part about these types of projects) and put a scoop of M&M’s per bag and set them aside.

Next I had cut all the white cardstocks to 4 x 6” and the strips of pattern paper to 1 ½ x 3” and ½ x 3”. Once I had cut these, it was easy to have Wendy use a gluestick and adhere the pieces to the cardstock as per the sample I had made for her. This is where I had to really let her be and keep telling myself that this is her project – their satisfaction in their work, pride in doing it

themselves, and the look on their faces is worth just letting it be and not worrying about matching corners and straight lines. She actually did amazing well.

Next came the stamping. Now I had this image in my head of having the images be black with just a touch of color for some *pop* and…well, I had to remind myself again to just let her enjoy the process as I do. She wanted brown monkeys, yellow tigers, orange lions and green crocodiles. Who am I to say no, and really..that’s why my kids enjoy this tradition so much because I do just let them be and create their own.

What I did do tho was teach Wendy proper stamping. Straight up and down, don’t wiggle, don’t rock, pull straight up – and for a first timer – I gave her two thumbs up.

After she got all her animals stamped she then did the corresponding messages. Here we realized we hadn’t left enough space for a few of them and I taught Wendy how easy it is to curve the stamps to fit the spot, boy…did her eyes light up!

And I wonder why she’s hooked. If that alone didn’t do it, the next step did for sure.

I nearly forgot that she has to let her classmates know who these are from. Rather than having her sign all 34 of them I just created her name out of the Mainstreet small alphabet, added a little heart stamp from the LMLMN set and she had her own signature (7)

Lastly – to keep things simple we just stapled the bagtoppers to the treat bags and called them done. She can hardly WAIT for the Valentines Party at school!

Sharyn @ TT