Baby's First Valentine

I love Valentine’s Day. It’s pink and red and filled with sugar. What’s not to love?

Enough with the card monopoly, Christmas.

As a kid, the best part of Valentine’s Day was the cards. Remember making those “mailboxes” out of old shoe boxes for all the Valentines you would get from your classmates? Why don’t we do that as adults? I’ll tell you why: We’ve just come off of Christmas, and Christmas owns the card market.

Oh sure, you’ll go out and buy your sweetie a card, but there is no mass mailing of comfort and joy like there is at Christmas. But when you think about it, this is the time of year we NEED a little pick me up. By February, snow has lost its luster—literally, it’s now gray instead of white. Everyone is sick of the cold weather and it feels like a million years until summer.

Now, wouldn’t you like to open your mailbox and get a homemade Valentine about now? Fortunately for me, I have been the recipient of a hand-made card for many years. My friend Stacey, who inspired this idea, has taken photos of her kids and sent out homemade Valentines to family and close friends every year for about a decade.

And now that I have a child of my own, I decided to steal her tradition and adapt it to my own Valentine-making style. So let’s get on with it. Here’s how I created my daughter’s first Valentine.

Step 1: Figure out how many people you are sending this card to. Look at your Christmas list and eliminate about 90 percent. That brought me down to grandparents, aunts, uncles and Stacey (after all, I owe her about a dozen of these). So I was looking at making about eight Valentines—a reasonable number. If you have more people (say 12-15), consider how time consuming each hand-made Valentine will be and whether you are up to the challenge. No sense in biting off more than you can chew. You’ll just get frustrated and quit. Nobody likes a pissed-off crafty Cupid, so set realistic boundaries for yourself.

Step 2: Obtain an adorable child or baby (preferably your own) and set up a photo shoot. And by photo shoot I mean: Dress your kid in something cute and get her to smile for the camera against a backdrop of your choosing. Do not schedule a professional photographer for this (save that for the Christmas card). The whole point is homemade, remember? Grandmas live for this stuff. Before you set up the shoot, think about your final result. Is it a sweet Valentine? A funny one? A punk-rock one? Pick a general theme.

She's cute, huh?  True confession: I took not one, not ten, but 80 photos to get the shot I wanted. Thank goodness for digital cameras.

Step 3 (optional): If you have some Photoshopping skills (mine are minimal), have some fun with your photo. I took my original shot against a wrinkly sheet, so I changed the background to solid pink to make Isla look like she was floating. If you haven’t guessed, I chose to make my Valentine funny.

Tee hee. This just makes me laugh.

Step 4: Now we get crafty! You know what that means—it’s time for a trip to Michael’s (Joann Fabrics is fine, too)! Once you get to the craft mecca of your choice, go nuts. Seriously, just pick whatever appeals to you. You should have some sort of design in mind first though or it’s easy to just buy everything in sight. These crafty places suck you into their evil vortex of ribbons and glue.

Since I had a photo with a Pepto-Bismal pink background, I wanted my card (which the photo was going to be pasted onto) to be cream-colored. So I grabbed a pack of plain, flat ivory cards. I wanted said photo to be heart-shaped, so I found some stencils and added those to my stash. Now for the fun stuff (i.e. GLITTER). Among the many products Martha Stewart slaps her name on is glitter. And it’s not just any old glitter. This stuff is soft, powdery and sparkles like a diamond in the right light. I opted for purple.

Now that I had the core of what I needed to create my design, I threw in a few extras: glue, pack of pastel paper, double-sided tape, markers, mini-glittered heart stickers. 

Eat your heart out, Martha.

Step 5: Trace the heart stencil with a marker or pen directly onto the photo. Cut it out.

This was the easy part.

Step 6: Draw a conversation bubble onto a piece of pastel paper. Cut it out. Trace it seven more times and write “Happy Valentine’s Day” on each one. Cut them out and glue them to your photo. 

The technical term for these is "conversation bubbles."

Step 7: Trace your heart stencil onto the flat, cream-colored card. And now is the moment you’ve been waiting for. It’s glitter time. So dust off those elementary-school gluing skills and get ready to get messy (now is a good time to mention you should NOT attempt this project while your child is awake).

Dip a small, cheap paintbrush into a little pot of glitter paste (Martha makes this, too!) and trace just outside the line of the heart shape you just drew on the card. While glue is still wet, dump the glitter all over it. Shake off the excess glue and let dry.

It's ok to be a little sloppy—you're going to cover most of this up with the photo.

Step 8: After glitter has dried, use double-sided tape to secure heart photo to card. Glitter should make a nice outline. If you are a perfectionist, this part may be a bit painful for you. In case you’ve forgotten, glitter is messy business. Chances are, your glitter may scatter a bit. Just go with it—remember, HOMEMADE.

Almost there! Just a couple more finishing touches and you can wash your hands of Valentine's Day 2012!

Step 9: Add cute little heart stickers and sign the card. 

Ta da! And if you have extra heart stickers, slap them on the envelopes. The mailmen love a little extra glitter.

Step 10: Pat yourself on the back for going back to your third-grade roots and making Valentine’s Day extra special for the grandparents this year. And don’t forget to put away the margarita mix and tequila you needed to get yourself through the glittering and gluing portion of this craft.