Homemade Valentines
By Karina | February 14, 2011
Today is Valentine’s Day! And while there is a LOT about Valentine’s day that I find, frankly, just ridiculous (this Natalie Dee comic pretty much says it all) - and a fair bit that isn’t so ecofriendly! - I really love the kid aspect of Valentine’s day - you know, where you sit down with a stack of construction papers and a glue stick and make some sticky messy cards for people you really love.
There are a few reasons I love the card-making aspect of VD (you all don’t mind if I call it VD, do you?)! For one, it reminds me of time spent with my awesome Gramma, digging through her craft closet and dragging out all manner of supplies to make whatever we could possibly dream up. I also love the interaction with the kids - Seven is right at the height of his Card-Making-Frenzy, and he cranks out endless cards with sweet sentiments on them for his friends and family. And I also love giving someone something unique, and even more so, the fact that during the entire time of making the card, I was holding that person in my mind with loving thoughts.
So this year, I did my best to figure out what I had in my paper craft cabinet of doom (really a quite lovely barrister’s shelf with several boxes of cards and card making supplies) this week. I ended up with a box of odds and ends that I’ve collected over the year - origami papers, stickers, sparkly letters, scraps of old holiday cards and weird pictures I had cut out and saved. And I made two lovely cards, one for Seven and one for Eleven. They aren’t polished or fabulous looking, but they are made out of materials I already had on-hand and they are charming in their own dorky “Why yes I did just glue 15 cut out paper hearts onto the front of this card, and it’s because I LOVE YOU” way. I also made some cards out of old postcards and other cards I had in my paper boxes, gluing paper hearts and writing witticisms on them before popping them into the mail to some loved ones.
As I was working through my paper stash, I thought to myself: this is really an accidental Tiny Choice! I could have bought cards, or made elaborate fancy pretty things from new materials, but I’m pretty proud that I went through materials I already have - and now that I’ve taken a peek at my paper craft cabinet of doom I am excited by the raw material that is still in there, and which I can use moving forward to drop little notes to friends and family. It’s another way of using what you have, and I’m glad that I found this stuff and put it back into circulation!
And remember! Tiny Choices loves you!
[[Photo by flickr users ValleeC via creative commons license.]]
Have you done something particularly inventive for Valentine’s Day this year?
Topics: Crafts/DIY | 2 Comments »
2 Comments
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I love that you brought this up! I was teaching an art class for families this weekend with the theme: printed Valentine’s, and we made hand printed cards. One little girl and her mom walked in and said, “we need 28 cards.” I thought, “wow, that’s a lot.” Then she described how she was NOT going to spend 2.99 on Spongebob cards this year. So they sat down and made potato print cards for all her classmates. How cool!
My daughter and I did the same thing at home, only we used some of her (many) watercolor paintings and cut them into hearts to glue onto construction paper cards for her classmates. So much more personal and fun!
that is so cool! my mom is an excellent potato stamper, and I’ve always had a soft spot for that kind of craft/art.