Valentine's Cards for Classmates

This year I came up with a new idea for the annual Valentine's Day card exchanges for my girls' classmates. In years past we have bought Valentine's cards, but it always seems so impersonal. We've also made cards (with glue, doilies, colorful paper, etc), but my daughter is usually bored and/or frustrated by the third card and I end making all the cards. This year I had my 8-year-old draw out her designs with marker and artist crayons on 5.5" X 8" paper (a regular piece of paper, cut in half). For my 3-year-old, I drew hearts on the paper and had her color them. I scanned the artwork into the computer as JPEG files, cleaned up and added text (if needed) in Gimp and imported them into OpenOffice. I then resized them to fit 12 on a page (really easy, you just grab the "handles" and move to the correct size). I made them each approximately 2.5" X 3.5". I am printing them on card stock and cutting them apart with a box cutter. The girls will write names on the back. Handmade artwork without the "production line" frustration! (and of course, I had to get in on the act as well, I used stencils for the lettering on my "crossword" Valentine!)

Beautiful Gifts

I'm very late on posting this (I'll blame it on The Fabric Shopper!) Here are some gifts received (and given) for Christmas!

Handmade (or homemade?) calendars given by us to family. I took pictures the girls had made throughout the year, scanned them into the computer to clean them up (and color them, in some instances) and put them into a calendar template I made. (I have a Mac and used all freeware applications from the web - Gimp (is like Photoshop) for the pictures and OpenOffice (like MicroSoft Office) for the calendars. I printed them on cardstock (2 to a page), cut them with a box cutter, cut the corners with a nifty corner cutter found in the scrapbooking section of JoAnn's (bought with a nice 50% off coupon!), punched holes in the corners and added a keyring.

Beautiful Gifts Received:

A hand-knited washcloth.

Handmade ABC books using family (and blog!) photos.

A lovely, non-plastic, reusuable water bottle.

Orange (!) measuring bowls.

Memory game.

Charley Harper flashcards/floor puzzle.

Snow After Ice

Photos of the trees outside my father's home. Snow fell after rain had turned to ice on the trees.

I feel as though one might encounter a faun if she wandered this white forest long enough...

Paper Dolls

I came home from work Saturday night (I work as a waitress, so it was late) to find these beautiful paper dolls sitting on the dining room table. I quizzed my husband, "was she bored and you told her to draw something?" "No." "Did she find the idea in a book?" "No." "Was she looking at pictures of people in costumes?" "No, she just sat at the table and made them." Amazing... (the one on the far right has leaves for hair and on the bodice of her dress)

Variations on a Leaf Craft

My 7-year-old was bored and demanded that someone suggest something fun to do (because, of course, most of my original suggestions involved chores). So I told her to go outside and gather some leaves. When she came in, I showed her and her 3-year-old sister how to do leaf rubbings with crayons on paper, as I had seen on this post on maya*made. (we skipped the watercolor part)

Well, little miss 3 didn't have much patience for this rubbing sort of craft, and soon settled on making something completely of her own imagination involving two of her very favorite activities in the whole entire world - gluing and cutting. She created quite the work of art, I believe. It had to be put in the window, too, just like big sister's leaf rubbings!