Be By Valentine

I pinned this Valentine's Day idea a few weeks ago and I thought it would be perfect to send to Grandparents this year. (Please note that yes, I completed this project last night. The night before. They were mailed today - Valentine's Day. They will be late. But they are precious.)

There were no directions with this post so I decided to post it here in case someone ever wants to borrow the idea.

My Brown Eyed Girl and Mr Blue Eyes' little hands will only be little for so long. I only have a few more years of capitalizing on their tiny little features for gift ideas. By the time they are 10 and 12, it will be gift cards at Christmas and plain old cards for other holidays.

Cogliere l'attimo! (seize the day)

Okay Pinterest friends. So I knew I wanted to make one for each kid. I decided to make my Brown Eyed Girl's hand print on pink construction paper and Mr Blue Eyes' on red. Off to the craft store!

I knew I had to make more than one set and I didn't feel like fooling around with the kids any longer than I had to. Meaning, I made one master stencil. Mr Blue Eyes actually was better at holding still, but I knew that my tracing opportunities would be limited. My Brown Eyed Girl was all about having her hand traced; however, she barely kept her hand still for me to trace it once. She kept trying to watch the pen as it went around and while peeking kept wiggling. Best solution for all was to just get one good stencil.

I took a piece of colored construction paper and folded it in half. Then I made sure to place each child's index (pointer) finder and thumb on the crease line. When opened, the connecting points are what form the heart.

Keeping the paper folded, I cut out the hand print making sure not to sever the connecting points.

It's okay that the index finger and the thumb are not rounded at the tips. If you round them, you will end up with two, separate hand prints. We want these points connected.

Once the hand print is all cut out, flip the hand print up side down. The index finger and the thumb form a heart. Awweee

And that really is it. Pretty simple. They take a little time to cut out. But they sure are cute.

I added the words "LOVE YOU" to the front of each one to help orient the hand the right way for our Sweat Hearts. I also wrote each kids name and the date on the back. I just used a ball point pen. I caution using a Sharpe marker for this. Although the words will stand out more, on a test piece of paper the marker bled through to the other side. Upon opening, the marker smudged up the hard work put into this craft. I am sure you could find a better quality paper, maybe even some patterned scrap booking paper that might work well and not allow the marker to bleed though. The Sharpie just did not work well on the construction paper.

For a last minute Valentine idea, I thought it was a Pinterest success!

I will admit for a split second I thought about making all of my Brown Eyed Girl's classmates the same Valentines.

Then I got lazy...

I pulled out the pre made sucker Valentines I bought. Fed the suckers through the pre cut slits in the center. Wrote her name on them.

And I called it a night.

Pinterest Lesson #1: Know when to quit while you still think it's cute.