Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Stash Buster Valentine's Cards



This Valentine's Day the daughter and I decided to use some of our existing craft stash to make her school Valentine party cards, instead of buying the typical cards that kids just toss in the trash. We found some spare pieces of cardstock, loose pom poms and various google eyes. So, we made "love bugs". She wanted them to be removable so the kids could play with them.



We wrote up the poem in the car on our way home one day. And, with a little help from Adobe Illustrator's stock brush borders and a nice font called "Algerian", we designed a simple card the night before her party.



After printing the cards she colored and cut them out herself. Instead of trying to cut the circle for the bugs to fit in with scissors, I showed her how to punch out most of the circle with a regular hole punch. It took us three well aimed punches to remove enough of the circle. She signed the backs to pass them out. I put another small circle at the center top of the heart to be hole punched for a possible ribbon to be strung through. But we didn't end up using it.



Feel free to use this card for your own personal St. Valentine's Day cards perhaps for next year. A pdf of a 9 card 8.5x11" layout is available here.