Valentine’s day

Want another Valentine’s free printable? Sure you do! This time, we’re sharing fold over cards. If your kids have a Valentine’s party to attend, we’ve got you covered with a few cute (though I’m biased) tag printables.

If you’re looking to dish out candy, Nuts About You! tags are perfect.

Click the link, print, cut along the tick marks, and fold along the dotted line. Grab a bag of cellophane bags from the craft store (mine are 3 1/4 inches square when closed). Fill with peanut M&Ms (or another nutty treat), close, and staple the card over. There’s plenty of room for your little one to write a message to their friends.

If you don’t want your kids hopped up on sugar, give stickers instead. If your kids are anything like mine, they love three simple things: balloons, bubbles, and stickers. Any stickers.

Here’s Sticking With You, the girly version:

Or, we’ve got blue for a more boyish look.

Same routine. Print, cut, fold, staple to the package.

I couldn’t find stickers I liked, so I designed and printed my own.

But I had a problem. I printed the stickers on full label sheets. So I cut the designs out. Now I had to package them. A piece of wax paper cut to fit inside the same cellophane bags became a perfect backing for the home-made stickers. Just peel the label backing off, stick and seal.

I happened to have a mini stapler with orange staples, so I used that. Seriously, mini + office supplies = adorably irresistible.

You can make your own stickers to go with, too.

Print on full label sheets, then use a ruler and utility knife to cut apart, keeping centered between designs. Or, buy a big package at the store and divide up on wax paper sheets for a quick and sugar-free gift.

What Valentine’s cards have you given? Store bought? Hand made? Candyless?

P.S. This is the last Valentine’s project we’ll share. Pinkie swear.

When E takes his afternoon nap, I try to do a fun project with V. Sometimes we make a puzzle. Other times we color and practice our letters. With Valentine’s day coming up, we did a special project involving crayons. Before V could get started, I used a utility knife to cut crayon shavings. I looked for a pencil sharpener, but we don’t have one because really, who uses anything but a mechanical pencil now days?

Of course a little help is always nice, especially when the help is a cheesy-grinned four year old.

After shaving four different colored crayons (red, orange red, red violet, and flamingo to be exact), we finally got to the good part. We spread out a few sheets of kraft paper and one sheet of wax paper. V and I sprinkled the crayon over the wax sheet, trying to keep it as even as possible.

Cover it up with another sheet of wax paper.

And two more sheets of kraft paper.

Warm your iron to a medium setting and run it over the paper, melting the crayons.

Check as you’re going and keep ironing until the wax is completely melted.

Make a heart template, I recycled a flyer from the mail. Trace as many hearts as possible and start cutting.

To string our hearts, I used a needle to poke holes on both sides of each heart. Thread a small needle without cutting the other end from the spool. String the hearts on until you’ve reached the desired garland length.

I hung our garland in front of the living room window by making small loops on either end of the thread. Brackets are the perfect hangers.

And Dexter would have liked some of our red hearts, like this one that reminds me of his infamous blood slides.

What fun projects do you do with your kids? Do you remember making ‘stained glass’ as a kid? If I were crazy and needed another DIY light fixture in my house, I would most definitely make a faux capiz pendant using this same process. Just sub the hearts for a circle punch and sew the circles together. A wire wreath form would make a perfect multi-tiered base to hang the strands from. Can you tell I’ve considered this?!? Haha.