Silhouette Valentines

I love Valentine's Day. I know Valentines are just silly little pieces of paper, but I've just always just loved them. I think it's because I have such fond memories of Valentine's Day from my childhood. I wasn't exactly popular in elementary school, but on Valentine's Day everyone was nice I got cards from all the other kids. Sure, they didn't have a choice, but as a kid I don't remember being really aware of that fact.  (I may have also been in denial...) When I was little we always bought our cards, but these days I've been trying to make homemade ones. (Check out our Valentines past here and here.)

 I instantly fell in love with the idea of a silhouette card when I found them at this lovely little shop, but $15.00 for cards for each of us just wasn't in the family budget (as a teacher I need Valentines, too.) I've been feeling a bit braver with photoshop lately, so I thought I'd try to make them myself.

I started by taking a profile picture of each child in front of a plain background. (Think plain white wall with good light and few shadows.) Then, using photoshop, I edited out that background, changed the colors around, and added the text. The thought bubbles, heart and circles were right there in photoshop so all I had to worry about was the placement. I really loved the boarder in the cards on Etsy, and thought the scalloped boarder I found here would do the trick. (You should pop in over there - she's got lots of great free downloads, and even more stuff for paying members.) The boarder is a separate layer in photoshop, so it was a good way for me to tackle learning how to use them. (So easy!) I uploaded the finished images to my favorite photo printing site and, at only ten cents per print,  was able to get a class set for less than $3.00 per child. I'm really happy with how they turned out - cute, personal and best of all - homemade.

Are you planning anything interesting for Valentine's Day?

Homemade Character Valentines

It's February, so I guess it's time to start thinking about Valentine's Day. Personally, I love homemade valentines. For the past couple of years, I've done things with the kids' faces on them, but this year the kids wanted cards with characters. I thought about just buying them at the store, but I knew there just had to be a better way. There had to be a way to create personalized cards that still had the kids'  favorite characters.

My first thought was to make them in Photoshop. So, I put this cute photo of Lego R2 D2 on a white background, added some cheesy text, and my son thought it would be perfect for the girls in his class.

Too girly? Really? How can Star Wars be too girly?  But, you know, it's important to portray the right image in second grade, so it was back to the drawing board. As I searched for images I could use, I came across this site. It was perfect! Large images - often with lots of space for text. I got to work and came up with card number two:

Of course, as a teacher, I needed valentines too! The Muppet fan in me fell in love with this picture of Oscar: 

My daughter is all about My Little Pony these days. So after viewing all the MLP backgrounds she settled  on the one below.  

Just in case you happen to have a little girl at home who loves My Little Pony, here is the same card without my daughter's name. You can download the font for free here. (You can find the fonts I used in the R2D2 card here and the Darth Vader card here - both also free.) Then just use your favorite graphics editing software and add in your child's name. (Or skip that step and have her sign with a silver sharpie.)  I cropped the image to be 4 by 6 - just perfect to upload to Snapfish  to get printed for nine cents each. I suppose you could do it at home, but I always seem to run out of ink at the most inopportune moments, so for me, Snapfish was easier.

Please feel free to download these cards and use them. Just be aware that you can't sell them - the characters are all trademarked, or is it copyrighted? I'm not sure, but either way selling them is a big no no.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2024 School Valentines

Our school celebrates Valentine's Day and the kids really enjoy it - even my fifth and sixth graders like making and passing out cards. MIPS is so small that many of the students bring in cards for every student (and teacher) in kindergarten through sixth grade. This year I opted to 3D print flexible dinosaurs to give to my students, and the kids LOVED them! Of course I made a card to share, too. Cheesy, I know, but what is Valentine's Day without a few goofy cards?

Homemade Valentine's Day Cards

I saw these Valentines last year and immediately fell in love with the idea. They were cute, personal, simple, and best of all - homemade. I showed them to the kids, and while they didn't really care about the homemade part, they loved the idea of giving their friends candy.

The hardest part was getting a good photo - one with a hand in a decent position and large enough not to tear once the stick was inserted. Then I photoshopped in the messages, uploaded them to Kodak, and they arrived in the mail a week later.

I cut the slits above and below the hands with an exacto-knife and the kids are ready to slide the suckers into their hands tonight after dinner. I know these did end up costing more than other Valentine options, but the kids really like them and, of course, so do I. Plus, we don't have to spend forever signing their names on each one. At four and six, writing your name that many times is quite a daunting task. I liked them so much, I needed some for myself.

Despite the fact that they wouldn't be homemade, I am leaning toward these for next year. The science teacher in me adores them! Yeah, I know, I'm a geek...

2017 Valentines

As always, my kiddos wanted personalized Valentine cards to pass out to their friends at school. This year Miss K wanted cards with this Sans character on them. (Apparently Sans is a little skeleton guy in a game called Undertale - which, of course, I've never heard of. Nor has she ever played.) We packaged him with SweeTart skulls and bones. Most of her friends didn't get the tibia joke, but that's OK.

S has been addicted to Swedish Fish lately and wanted something with a fishy theme. Nothing too fancy, but they sure looked cute in bags with the red fishies. I hadn't had Swedish fish in years - I'd forgotten just how good they were...

Feel free to download these and use them. The high resolution versions are below; just right click and save to your computer. Only part  the image shows, but it will all be there when you save it.