Hello my name is — a crafty Valentine

A few weeks ago I discovered Pinterest, and have got to say I find it much more intriguing a timesuck than Facebook or Twitter and I can justify my time spent there as “research.” It was on my first visit or two to Pinterest that I saw this idea for kids’ Valentines and since I'm anti-store-bought-Valentines I was quick to try this out and see how it turned out with my own kids. I'm not really sure where the idea for this originated, but by researching it as best I could it seems like this was a big trend last year, so maybe I'm late to the game. Regardless, I heart the idea and I love how they turned out. My 8-year-old is very excited to pass these out next week, and my kindergartener, well — he's excited about the suckers.

The hardest part of this photo process was (1) The weather. It was about 20 degrees the day we went outside to take the photos and while my original intent was to just have a lot of the white snow surroundings as a background, it was way too cold to stay in a big white field of snow trying to get the hand positioning just right — so we retreated to our backyard where the wind was blocked by trees and we could run right back inside for a warm up. (2) Getting the hand in just the right spot. With my daughter she held the position pretty soon after we we were able to get one we liked pretty quickly. With my 6-year-old son, let's just say he held it close, and it worked after several attempts (he is a mover!) This is definitely a project best for older children!

All that was left for me to do once I edited the photo and added the message and graphics in Photoshop was to send it off for printing (Overnight Prints value postcards was the method I chose, around $15 per child is what I spent ... ) and make two cuts with an Xacto blade to insert the suckers. I printed them plain white on the back, so the kids can write/customize them in any way they want to.

Comments

[gina]

ok. these are adorable!