Valentine's Day Cards

So leading up to Valentine's Day I couldn't decide if I was gonna have Miss B send out Valentine's Day cards or not. I mean, she's two. Would she really understand? So I neglected to sign her up for our mommy's group valentine exchange and opted out of the party as well. I just didn't want more crap, especially when SHE doesn't really understand the full meaning of it.

But as the day got closer, I started feeling more and more guilty. And started thinking of people that SHE could send Valentine's too without worrying about getting Valentine's back. So I made a list and started brainstorming.

Should I have her color something?

Should I cut out some hearts and have her paste them on a piece of paper?

Should I send a photo?

The idea slowly started formulating.

I definitely wanted to go the '"Bee" Mine' route

Especially since her nickname is B.

And wouldn't it be cute with little bees all over the place, to tie in with the Bee Mine?

Definitely a small card, nothing extreme.

And maybe a picture of her?

Or a drawing, maybe?

The wheels were definitely turning in my head.

And here's the final product:

I started out by cutting a small 4x6 card out of pink cardstock. That would be the base of the card. Then I printed on white cardstock "Bee Mine, Happy Valentine's Day" using one of the Pea fonts over at Kevin & Amanda. Then I was starting to feel like the valentine was becoming more of MY thing than Little Miss B's. So I took out our yellow Melissa and Doug fingerpaints and taught B how to thumbprint all over the card. She had a blast and took inking seriously. But keep in mind, she's two, so sometimes...she got a little carried away, thought she was fingerpainting and we ended up with little Bees that were like three inches long. It was hilarious. Once the bees were dried, I drew on their wings, eyes, and stripes, wrote in the year and attached a simple Martha Stewart sticker. The timing was perfect since B only had the time span to do her thumbprinting before wanting to watch another Yo Gabba Gabba episode. I swear, Yo Gabba Gabba is her crack. It's scary how well I know all those songs.

Once that was done, I wondered what I was going to do on the back. I loved the way the bees turned out, but it was lacking her name. Even though most people know we call her Little Miss B, some people who aren't around a lot (i.e. my MIL and my dad) aren't as familiar, so how was I going to tie in the "Little Miss B" nickname and the bees?? Coloring didn't seem to fit in. And her writing her name wouldn't really be that great, especially since it's really just me guiding her writing.

That's when it hit me, a photo would be awesome. Especially for those that we were mailing off to people we don't see often. Perfect! 

So I picked four different photos and printed 12 for the 12 cards I had made. By the way, on a side note, did you know that CVS Photo, has a cool app for your iPhone that lets you send your iPhone photos straight to CVS for printing? Super handy when you have millions of pictures like myself... Anyways, I had them printed 4x6 but chose photos I could easily trim. I trimmed them down, attached the photo and quickly jotted down "Miss B says..." Then I let them sit under a stack of heavy books for the night to make sure everything laid flat and stayed glued and the next day, I stuffed, sealed and sent them out. 

Altogether the 12 cards took less than two hours to do everything (that's including the thumbprinting). And completed, the cards cost less than $10. I used 2 pieces of pink cardstock (valued at about a $1), the 12 photos cost me less than $3 to print, I used 2 pieces of white cardstock to print the saying, though I realized after I could have easily fit it all on 1 page (valued at about $1) and the Martha Stewart sticker sheets cost about $3 at Michaels for two sheets and approx 40+ stickers.

It definitely was a cute DIY Valentine and a fun mommy and me craft that is easy enough for anyone!