Lovelihood

Let's start with The Bear's Valentines, because they were easy. Because I used a free pattern from a web-sourced idea. Felt a little like cheating, but what are free online patterns are for, after all. Also felt little like cheating because they're so similar to the ones I made Bear last year, right down to the metal type stamp and fingerprint hearts on the tag/hanger detail (with edges unfinished and fantastically susceptible to fraying). But woolen hearts are an allure I just can't beat, and for another year I chose not to fight it. 

Candy would be the default go-in. But it's not as if these kids need more sugar in their lives. Stickers and tattoos are Bear's go-to happy-makers, these days. And as she's the closest insight I've got to Toddlers These Days, that's what we're going with. 

Also, hand-stitching the couple dozen hearts with a luxe perle cotton completely stamped out my long-harbored notion that I dislike handwork. Because apparently I do quite enjoy having a lap-bound project while cozied up under a throw. Or passing time at the breakfast table while the children agonize over their last quarter inch of yogurt. Or taking a break from playground hovering. Or multitasking while checking Facebook updates. And, just as with reading a book or doing my crossword puzzle, I like the kids seeing me make things in front of them.

As for The Boy's Valentines, I can't trace the exact genesis of these with a simple url. DIY seed tapes and seed bombs and seeded paper have been making the rounds for a while now, and it's an idea I heartily support, even while my own thumb is steadfastly disinclined to make things grow. But those bulbs we planted in the fall have been poking up and reminding me that plants indeed have the ability to grow around here with the minimal maintenance that a Kindergartener can supply. And I love the idea of sending out cards with a bit of fun utility to them. 

So we pulpified some colored tissue paper, starting with the bright green sheets that swaddled the fancy heirloom seeds we picked up at the fancy gardening boutique. Not having the proper paper-making supplies (there are some crafty supplies I am missing, after all) we simply finger-pressed seed-embedded wads of the blender-puréed pulp into scalloped cookie cutters placed over super-absorbant cloths (OK, they were cloth diapers). Left them in front of a heater vent to dry out for a couple nights and they were compacted and hard as the cardboard on those 4-up to-go trays you get at Starbucks. It's a lot like felting loose wool into a tight little bead.

And then those sat around for a couple weeks while I put off designing the cards around them. 

My design process:

1. Try to conceptualize the product. 
2. Fail.
3. Get distracted by the little hexagons that I've got going.
4. Put off working on the project because I don't have a clear vision for it.
5. Faced with dwindling lead-time, force myself to just sit down and push pixels around for the thirty minutes that it takes me to come up with an idea I'm really excited about. 
6. Remind myself of all those designy aphorisms that tell you to just stop thinking and get to working. Also remind myself that I've been doing this pixel pushing for a while now, and I'm actually pretty ok at it.

Every damned time.

So, the cards came together. I could have made more effort to better tie it all in to Valentine's Day than that tenuous "Happy Valentine's Day" bit I've got there. Still, I've already mentioned that I'm crazy happy with them. I'm also fairly confident there are enough visual cues to dissuade the Kindergarteners from trying to consume them. And that's what good design is really all about.

Valentine's Day, like any other holiday that requires the social skill that a comfort in one's own skin affords, was not my favorite childhood holiday. My mother, having paid tuition, and on top of that having to commit a certain amount of time and money to the mandatory fundraising required just to keep the school afloat on an annual basis, was not so keen to spend even more money on non-essentials. So she was ever reluctant to supply me with the standard pre-perforated, generically cartoony valentines, let alone the premium ones that were delivery mechanisms for Life Savers and movie marketing and other commodities that established you as the cool kid. 

There was at least one year when I was sent to the dining table with a stack of scrap paper and a Bic to scribble out my own cards. Mom used to tell me how, as a kid, she and her siblings lofted homemade kites and paraded with hand-crafted lanterns. But those stories always offered more of a when-I-was-your-age-I-had-it-rougher kind of morality than an affirmation of creative living. So, to me, showing up at school with a handful of #10 envelopes bulging with a smattering of bulk Red Hots and an awkwardly-sized chicken-scratched index card as remittance for Valentine's Day was a bit of an embarrassing endeavor. Better to show up with nothing.

This is something I realize: It's a helluva lot easier to rouse the troops to create instead of buy before they're old enough to be embarrassed by their parents' desire to do something a little different. At three and a half years, not yet clued-in to the accepted protocol of these sorts of things, The Boy is still quite excited to hand out his personalized valentines. One day he will be mortified at the idea of handing out something that doesn't advertise the latest in the Spiderman franchise. Today, he can appreciate our homemade valentine for what it is: something he painted, crayoned up and glittered, bearing his own scratched out signature, and housing home-made marshmallows, which, in his allergenic world of hive- and vomit-inducing chocolate kisses and peanut butter cups, are the Holy Grail of treats for him. These valentines are everything he loves, and he's been bubbling around the past couple days, excitedly prattling on about how he'll get to share them with his friends.

So, yeah. I'm enjoying this day. Who knows how many more I'll have like this?

The Boy is in a full-coverage stage of artistic development. Given crayons or markers or paints or beads, his primary goal is for utter annihilation of any white surface. Sure, he also diligently colors within the lines when they're given, a development that at once makes me proud and sad. And there are rudimentarily representative drawings, things like happy faces and rough and tumble renderings of our little familial unit. But lay out a fresh sheet of paper, and as often as not, it becomes a full-frontal abstraction of colors and textures. Which doesn't stop us from posting much of it on walls and appliances and more walls. But abstract art isn't really my bag. 

In a twist of gender stereotypes, The Boy finds pink to be a most pleasing color. Somehow, I find this less distressing than the idea of The Girlie embracing it as her IT color. And his current medium of choice is the watercolor set we redeemed our grocery incentive program points for. The paints are in residence at the dining table, a cheap bribe to get him to sit at and partake of a meal every once in a while. So we get our fair share of washed out studies in the pastel shades known as Valentine's Day colors. Embracing the Valentininess, I slapped together a little something on the computer and whipped out the good ol' Xacto. Deciding to share the love (Get it? Love? Huh? Huh?), I've posted a handy PDF of the cut-out here. Just print onto card stock, carve out the gray parts and lay over whatever you feel is too cloyingly saccharine to take on its own… too-pink watercolors, wedding photos, dessert. Whatev. 

While I was at it, I took the computer file for that Gocco'd Love Letters card and made up a little printable PDF for that one, too. Even drew up a little envelope template, to boot. Download that goodness here. Might I suggest coaxing an appropriately cut piece of cereal box through your printer? That's what I did here. Our trusty inkjet did its share of protesting, but in the end submitted to the power of me forcing the paperboard down its gullet. So maybe you don't want to try it. I mean, I don't want to be responsible for any permanently traumatized printers out there. But I'm awfully happy with my result. So do what you will.