I love Valentine’s day! It’s so fun to break out the festive hearts and flowers and make Valentines any little boy or girl would enjoy. Here are four ways to get creative and craft Valentines at home:
1. Using this flower tutorial, I created crepe flowers and attached them to colored pencils. Tape them to a colored piece of paper and have your kids write sweet little Valentine notes for their friends! Every kid can use an extra colored pencil for their art masterpieces, and it’s extra special for that pencil to have a flower attached.
2. Cut your Honest boxes into fantastic little shapes for little ones! I personally am loving the hearts and arrows these days, and the Honest turquoise is the perfect color to keep things gender-neutral and adorable. Glue them with safe adhesive to a ribbon or stretchy elastic, and they’re unexpected and festive small and inexpensive gift for classmates and friends.
3. Bows have become a big deal these days. Awhile ago, I posted a little tutorial on how I make them (it’s much simpler than you would think!), and we use them for everything! Why not clip them to some card pretty card stock for all your kids’ little friends? I only have daughters, so theirs all go in their hair, but if I had a boy, he’d definitely have them clipped right onto his shirts to fancy up an outfit.
4. Simplify! Use the simple hearts and arrows cut from Honest boxes and attach them to brightly colored paper. Have your kids color or paint pictures on the cards, and they’re good to go!
Getting creative can be fun! Have you thought of any simple little Valentines ideas? We’d love to hear!
~ Kate Brightbill of Style Smaller
Looking for more sweet inspiration? Try making these DIY Valentines this weekend…
Valentines come in all shapes and sizes, so we’re excited to make these “My Heart” Sweatshirts by Small Fry—a DIY customized for the little loves in your life.
If you haven’t already met the trio behind Small Fry, let us introduce you (we can’t get enough of their new blog bursting with creativity). Small Fry launched recently in September 2012 because they wanted to share what they love about motherhood—adventure, enjoying their kids for who they really are, embracing their quirks, growing together. “With small kids it can be easy to surrender our days; we wanted to really be intentional about embracing this fleeting phase of child raising in our lives,” says the Small Fry team.
“Each of us enjoys being out in nature with our families. Dance parties, games, reading books—when they’re so little you really can’t contain them too much so anywhere they can run free, that’s where you’ll find us! Our boys are really social and love their friends, so any craft we can do all together will have our kids talking about it for weeks!,” exclaims the ladies. It’s no wonder they created their DIY with their kids in mind…
Every year around Valentine’s Day we start looking for something sweet for our boys to wear. Buying holiday-based clothing can be pretty wasteful, as we usually don’t care to wear it any other time of year. So, we decided to get our kids involved in making their own special love day gear!
We all had extra basics in our closets—each boy had super soft sweatshirts on hand so we upcycled them!
To get the kids involved, they traced their own heart shape onto card stock. For the smaller kids we drew dotted-line hearts that they could use as a template, all they had to do was connect the dots!
Once the kids have drawn their heart, cut out the middle leaving a heart-shaped stencil. Then using something to weigh the stencil down (soup cans work great!) and a sponge paintbrush, dab on fabric paint.
This is where you can get creative. Adding washi tape for stripes, or dots, or even their initials will make it even that much more personal! We love this project because our kids can get involved and it couldn’t be more personal, as it is there very own heart right there on their chest. Or you could recreate it on a bigger shirt of Grandma and Grandpa.
And speaking of little hearts, the Small Fry team wanted to end on a sweet note by sharing a film they created with Jenner Brown of Lumineux Films (PS – Watch their other lovely films here):
Looking for more Love Day activities? Check out our other great Valentines…
You know we’re smitten with anchors, so it’s no surprise that we’re in love with today’s DIY Valentine’s Day creations from Michelle P. of Vicinity Studio. Based out of Seattle, Michelle created Vicinity Studio when family and friends encouraged her to go public with her greeting cards, gift tags, and wrapping paper that she handcrafted for them. “Etsy’s platform made it easy to get my products out there, I’d recommend it to anyone,” shares Michelle. “My big plans for 2013 include having a photography show and licensing some of my patterns. Wish me luck!”
When making her designs, Michelle says that quality over quantity is a guiding principle. “It’s why I do everything I can to maximize the lifespan of my prints by using the highest quality archival inks and paper available,” she explains. “The printable Valentine’s cards I designed for Honest have a double whammy environmental upside. There’s no shipping goo put out into the world in order to get them to your home and since you only print what you need, there’s less waste all around. You can make it a triple whammy by using Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified or recycled card stock when printing. Check out Everest, which boasts 100% recycled material in all of their papers, or French Paper, which not only offers recycled and FSC certified papers, but has been using hydroelectric generators to power their business since 1922.”
When asked whom her Valentines are for, Michelle exclaimed:
“I’m going to send them to everyone I can think of! Nieces, grandparents, friends, neighbors…. Who doesn’t like to be thought of on Valentine’s Day?
To help everyone get into the spirit, I created these mini Valentine printables with a nod to the sea, exclusively for The Honest Company. Download the cards here, and make sure you have Adobe Reader (it’s free). Simply print what you need, cut, and make someone happy!”
~ Michelle P. of Vicinity Studio
Valentine’s Day celebrations—whether at home, work, or school—are marked by the anticipated exchange of handwritten notes, decorative cards, and sweet gifts. It’s such a fun tradition, that it’s estimated that 1 billion Valentines are sent and received each year! Due to the holiday’s popularity and our “Honest” love for DIYs, we’re kicking off a week-long series that will feature Valentine’s Day cards, décor, and other handmade projects made exclusively for you by bloggers, graphic designers, and artists.
Today, we’d like to introduce Rachelle Schwartz of Wiley Valentine (we couldn’t think of a more fitting name!), a fashionably classic line of paper goods that are designed with the environment in mind. “We wanted to create pretty paper delights that meant something to us and who we were creating them for. We also wanted to keep the environment in mind making choices to have everything made in the USA, and use recycled or renewable resources whenever possible,” says Rachelle of her partnership with her friend Emily.
In addition to creating a business around sustainable practices, Rachelle shares that she and her Wiley Valentine co-founder are both avid users of all things Honest. “It’s really important to us to choose products that are natural, free of harmful chemicals, and to share this with our friends and families. We are especially conscious of the foods we eat, keeping them has natural, whole, and free of pesticides as possible,” relates Rachelle. “My absolute favorite thing is to visit the farmers’ market as a family. We then take all the fabulous goods and have a picnic in our backyard. Spending time outdoors with family, enjoying local foods prepared by people you form relationships with is priceless.”
Like us, Rachelle loves Valentines because they can be fun for kids, adults, a friend, anyone. Rachelle and the Wiley Valentine team sat down and had a “crafternoon,” all designing the You Rock! Valentine’s Day Cards just for the Honest Community. Keep reading to learn from Rachelle how to make these at home:
When Honest asked me to do a guest post for Valentine’s Day, I was so excited and inspired. I love doing crafty Valentines with my daughter and then giving them to family members. They just love it!
This play on words—You Rock!—is a fun Valentine that you can give to anyone. A friend, a loved one, a classmate. You can go outside and find rocks, dig through your craft bin (natural and non-toxic paint and glue, feathers, twine, ribbon, recycled paper, repurposed material all make great options), and get decorating. Then print out one of our fun mini Valentines to attach or include with your rock. The rock becomes a tiny piece of natural artwork, and they are surprisingly fun to decorate! Enjoy!
~ Rachelle Schwartz of Wiley Valentine
Want to make other Valentines that rock? Check out these great DIYs…
Although the holidays are behind us, no one wants to let go of the sweet memories from 2012. So, we’ve come up with a clever craft that allows you to preserve the cheer of the year and the great holiday cards sent by your family and friends. Instead of tossing the paper and packaging you’ve collected over the last month, upcycle the materials to make an easy DIY book to store those cards and other mementos. It’s a great winter break activity to do with your kids—together you can reminisce about all the family fun you had during 2012.
Materials
Steps
1. Gather all your holiday cards from 2012, photos, or keepsakes that you want to save.
2. Sort your cards and other items so they face the direction you think is easiest to view them when flipping through your book. Set aside your family’s holiday card to use for the book cover.
3. Measure the biggest card you received and then add one inch to the height and width. These will be the dimensions for your front and back covers.
4. Measure and cut 2 pieces of card stock according to your dimensions.
5. Adorn the front cover of your book with your family’s holiday card using natural glue or tape (decorative washi tape could be a fun addition). If you don’t have a family holiday card, you can decorate the cover with a favorite greeting card, festive paper, fabric scraps, an inspiration quote, your children’s artwork, or whatever you like. We chose to mount our favorite holiday card on white waffle paper using an eyelet in the top right and left corners so we can still open the card.
6. Hole Punch your cards and any other inserts. You can either hole punch your cards once in the top left corner or hole punch your cards twice at both corners depending on how you want to open your book.
7. Use ribbon, twine, or loose-leaf rings to bind your book of cards together.
8. Have fun, personalize, and make this yearly tradition your own! Consider adding a family note reflecting on the year’s shining moments; a quote from each family member; or random facts about the family’s favorites for the year. It’s a great time capsule to look back upon year after year.
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