Simple Valentine Cards

Messing around with paint the other day (as you do) I ‘accidentally’ discovered I could print quite effective hearts with my fingers, and with Valentine’s day coming up I thought it might be an easy and very personal way of making a joint Valentines card together with the kids.

All you do is use the top third of your finger to create each side of the heart, laying it on the paper diagonally, first one way and then overlapping diagonally the other way. Make sure that you press the whole of your fingertip down, not just the top, or you won’t get the bottom of the heart, and of course be careful not to smudge it as you do so.  After a little practice even my 6 year old was producing perfect hearts.  With younger children, you’ll need to hold their finger and do it for them, but it does mean that even babies can contribute.

Because it can be a little hit and miss producing a perfect heart, and because I am something of a perfectionist, I did the prints on paper first,  so that I could choose the best, and then carefully tore them out to stick on the card. For the card with the single heart I was a little braver and successfully managed to do the print straight onto the card itself.

With children of various ages contributing, you will of course get a variation in the size of the hearts which is part of the charm, and you can accentuate this by the choice of digit used.  So I used my thumb, my 6 year old used his index finger, and I helped my 4 year old to make his print with his little finger.  I then hand-wrote a personal message beneath in silver pen. The end result is hand-made, cheap, personal yet still quite professional-looking I think, so overall I was quite pleased with it.