Mommy and Me Valentine Making

Yesterday we started a mother daughter joint crafting project. One of ER's very favorite things to do is to paint. She'd paint all day if I'd let her and she gets so into it. It's really fun to watch how excited she is. At this stage, art is more about the experience and not the end product, meaning she isn't trying to paint a picture of a specific object.

So we talk about what color she's using, what direction she's painting such as up and down or left and right. I use this mainly as a language activity, or that's my excuse since I am constantly talking to her. Sometimes I think other people in stores wonder why I am talking to her so much or if I am talking to myself before they notice her.

We've been working a lot on colors right now, a concept she hasn't grasped yet. She can kind of sort by color, but she doesn't have carry over from one day to the next color names.Anyway, yesterday we started painting pictures using red, pink, and purple. I gave her the first sheet and one color. When she'd painted all over that page, I picked it up and gave her a second sheet of paper. Then I gave her back the first sheet with a second color and so on. This helped prevent the colors from becoming all blended in together as the colors had some time to dry in between coats.
After they dried I cut them out into pieces. I measured the fronts of my premade cards, get these when they are on sale at major crafts store in packages of 50 with envelopes. It saves you a lot of hassle and waste as you don't have to cut down cardstock to make the cards or hunt for envelopes that fit. I used my paper edgers by Fiskars in Clouds, it's tricky getting the corners rounded. I'm getting better at it but am by no means good at it.
I'm now in the process of attaching them to the front of the cards. First I added some pattern paper scraps, if these look familiar I used them on yesterday's post for the matchbook mini notebooks. Then glue sticked on ER's artwork. I wrote the message with a pen on it, then went over the lines with a paper piercer, a sharp needle would work too for that. Piercing the design makes it easier to backstitch. You don't have to punch the needle through everytime, which could lead to tears. Place an old mouse pad underneath your card to protect your work surface and fingers! The red heart is a chipboard heart by Making Memories and the white felt heart is left over from making the felt cookies. Remember those, so glad I saved those scraps; knew they'd come in handy for something!
Here's another version, it's on a cute little photo holder I couldn't resist from Target. I just love strawberries on everything! I had enough pieces of ER's work to make a few Thank You cards too. It's kind of hard to tell in the pictures, but the embroidery thread matches the light aqua blue in the ribbon perfectly and the ribbon also the exact shade purple as the card and paint on it. The colors coordinate better in person.I can't remember what blog I saw this idea (if it's you please let me know - I left you a comment on your post about it) but someone was recycling their kids art into thank you cards, brilliant I thought. I've also seen on a couple of blogs, the of backstitching words or simple pictures onto the front of cards. So I combined the two and the end result are these cards. I think they're pretty darn cute, and she's already telling me, "I maked that," I think the Grandmas will love them.

PS: Make and Takes has several embroidery card patterns for a variety of season. I can't get the direct link to work right now, but search under card patterns. When I was a teaching, I'd have loved to get a set of the apple cards! Just a thought for all of you looking for teacher gift ideas.