making valentines

Because Addie isn't in school it hadn't occurred to me earlier to make valentines with her, but suddenly I realised: why not - we still have many people whom we love! And I decided to use my awake-in-the-night-time to plan and design out a collaboration project for us to make together the next day.

Knowing that Addie's skills pretty much only comprise of scribbles, I decided to try and expand upon her talents for our valentines.

To make them, I first went through my envelopes and found some glassine candy bags. In Illustrator I then designed up little 3.5 x 4.5" cards to fit the bags. I used the typeface Mrs. Eaves and a placed a heart-shape outline in the center of each card. I then repeated the card four to a page, and changed each of the names before printing to personalize them. I printed them out on my desktop printer onto watercolour paper, and then they were ready for morning and for Adelaide's contribution!

The next morning after Addie was fed, bathed, and happy, she was ready for our project. I gave her a big pink sheet of construction paper, red, pink, peach, and purple coloured cray-pas crayons, and let her go at it. She made up a big page of scribbles, I set it all aside and moved on to other things until her afternoon nap-time.

When nap-time came and she was cozy and sleeping, I got to work. Using a sharp new xacto knife and a cutting mat, I carefully trimmed out each of the middle heart shapes from each sheet of four cards, leaving a heart-shaped hole in the centre of each. I then cut a lot of 3.25" 2.25" pieces from Adelaide's scribble drawing, layered them with a piece of glassine paper, and taped them together to fit in behind the heart-shaped holes. Once all of the holes were filled, I glued the back with a glue stick (I prefer Ross Sticks) and pressed it to a pink sheet of card stock paper. I then used a brayer (printmaking roller) to roll it out, and placed it beneath my big cutting mat to press.

Once I had finished 5 sheets to make 20 cards, I trimmed them down to size using a sharp new knife. I then rounded the corners using my corner rounder, and took some photos.

By this time, Addie woke up from her nap. After a bit of cuddling, she joined to put the little valentines in their glassine pockets, along with some dark chocolate sundrops that - thank goodness - I happened to have in the house. 

And they are ready to be delivered to all of our sweet valentines!