I frequently stumble upon great ideas on various crafting blogs. Sometimes I like them so much that I remember them for great lengths of time. Last year just after Valentine's Day, I came across I-pod like Valentines at Family Fun and Lotto cards at Skip to my Lou. I bookmarked them and decided that we were going to make them this year!

Bug and I have been working on her I-pod cards for about a week. She cut out the labels, taped the color paper on, glued the labels on and had pretty much gotten them all done. We were waiting on a final count and names from her teacher. We got that on Friday along with a note that said that the school policy is that no food or candy can be given as a Valentine or handed out at school. Needless to say, she was very disappointed! (We're going to use them for Girl Scouts and Cherub Choir friends instead)

We brainstormed what other ideas we could use. Here are a few she rejected, although you may see them next year:
Stitched Heart Valentines from Pink & Green Mama
Vintage Valentines found through Once Upon a Holiday
Inchworm Pencil Cards from Alpha Mom

After much deliberation, Bug decided she wanted to have a maze card, using the free printable from Family Fun. It was intended to be a full page but Chip resized it so that we could print them out on quarter sheets of cardstock. They turned out really cute and are perfect for her kindergarten friends.


Boo wanted to make the Lotto Scratch cards. The only downfall with the Skip to My Lou version is that our printer has water soluble ink. If I were to paint over it, it would run and become illegible. I thought about taking it to a copy place and making color copies but before I could do that, I saw another version of this in last month's Family Fun (are you seeing a pattern? It's probably good I'm using my subscription!) I was wondering why the FF directions tell you to mix your acrylic paint with dish soap so I decided to try it both ways. See for yourself!


The swatch on the right is just plain acrylic paint. The swatch on the left is 2 parts acrylic paint, 1 part dish soap. The dish soap made the paint smell wonderful and made clean up a snap!

Anyway, it took several layers of paint to make the text underneath unreadable, but I think they turned out nicely.