Every year at Valentines Day, children celebrate by giving their classmates special handmade Valentines Day cards and treats to show their appreciation for one another. You can help your children to create the perfect handmade Valentines Day cards that won’t take forever, and won’t cost you a fortune, either. All you need to create these great little Valentines Day cards is a package of construction paper, a few glue sticks, some glitter, markers, and some child safety scissors.

Designing Cards

Depending on the ages of your children, you will have to create the base for their handmade Valentines Day cards. Simply pull all of the red and pink sheets out of the package of construction paper. Fold each sheet into quarters - once in half the long way; then in half again, folding the paper end to end - then fold in half once more lengthwise. If you are doing this for your child, you may want to get a sharp pair of scissors for this part. Take a marker and trace a half heart using the folded edge as your center guideline. Carefully cut your Valentines Day cards base out using your sharp scissors. When you unfold each piece, you should have a complete heart. 

Next, you will let your children decorate the outsides of their heart shaped Valentines Day cards with glitter. Simply use the glue stick to create designs on one side of each heart, and allow it to sit for a moment so that the glue becomes tacky. Next, carefully shake the glitter over the glue and allow it to dry thoroughly. Once the glue has dried, carefully shake each heart over a trash can so as to remove any excess glitter.

After the glue on your children’s Valentines Day cards has dried completely, they can decorate the insides with the markers. Have them write a special note to each of their friends. You can easily pick up some small packages of children’s Valentines Day candies, to which you can attach each card. Be sure to send the Valentines Day cards with your child inside a paper lunch sack, so as to prevent the glitter from brushing off inside your child’s backpack.

There you have it, the easiest (and cheapest) way for you and your children to create Valentines Day cards for their entire class. For just under ten dollars, your children can give their classmates special, personalized Valentines Day cards that will be remembered for many years to come.

Perhaps an entire generation felt so sorry for Charlie Brown never getting a Valentine through fifty years or more of Peanut comic strips.  In response, small and extremely cheap boxes of kid’s Valentine’s Day cards were made.  In this way, every kid that went to a school or church or other institution was assured of getting at least Valentine’s Day card.  No one would have to suffer like the fictional Charlie Brown ever again.

Cheaper By The Hundreds

If you go to any “dollar store” (called “pound shops” in England), any drug store, supermarket or department store beginning on New Year’s Day (and sometimes earlier), you will be able to find aisles full of extremely cheap kid’s Valentine’s Day cards.  Amounts of kid’s Valentine’s Day cards in the boxes vary.  Since they are so small, you can easily pick up a couple of hundred for a few dollars.

These Valentines are about the size of a credit card or less, that usually come with tiny envelopes.  The front contains a cheesy but cute image of a cartoon character or a generic animal, while the back contains areas to place the names of the giver and receiver.  They are flimsy and easily destroyed.  But that’s not the point with kid’s Valentine’s Day cards.  They just want to get something on Valentine’s Day – they don’t care what.

Free Online Cards

Perhaps you only need a few kids’ Valentine’s Day cards instead of hundreds.  You only need to send a couple out to neighborhood kids or kids you have to baby-sit on Valentine’s Day, for example.  In that case, buying a box of hundreds of tiny kid’s Valentine’s Day cards don’t make much sense.  But if you have access to the Internet and a printer, you’re good to go.

Go to a website called DLTK Holidays.com and you will find free kids’ Valentine’s Day cards to print out in cute designs.  You can only print out two at a time, so it is not cost effective to use this free site if you have several dozen cards to get.  The cost of printer ink and paper will far exceed any savings you might get on not buying boxed cards.

If you want to get even more economical than that, make your kids make their own darn kids’ Valentine’s Day cards.  Give them construction paper and crayons or old magazines they can cut up. Tell them about Charlie Brown to get them inspired. 

Gifts are great. But they’re incomplete without that all important Valentine’s Day card. Yet, sometimes, what you want to say just isn’t available in printed or electronic form. Don’t despair! Make your own.

Sure, you’re not a poet. But you don’t have to invent your own rhymes to make your own card. You can freely borrow the long and worthy words of Wadsworth Longfellow or the telling phrases of Tennyson. The pros do, all the time.

And don’t be put off by the fact that you might not be the world’s greatest graphic artist. Here again, the commercial card makers often buy and borrow. These are options if you don’t happen to have the artist’s gift yourself.

Computer graphics programs can easily help you do both. You can select phrases from a billion different sources online. Then combine them with photos or drawings from almost as many places. With only a modest effort you can create a card that looks just as you want, and says just what you mean. Don’t have a color laser printer? Not to worry. Take or send your file to a business that will print it out for you.

But maybe you do have at least a little bit of artistic talent. Or, a willingness to make the effort, at least. That might well produce a very fine result. After all, the recipient is rarely going to judge the card, so much as the sentiment. ‘A for effort’ still means a lot.

So, gather together those materials and get started.

Colored card stock is item #1. You can go for a plain, colored base in traditional red. Or, you can expand your creative horizons and buy card stock that has a pre-printed design. It could be simply an abundance of hearts or flowers. Or, it could portray just the mood you want to evoke. There’s no end of choices available.

Now, get out your pen and pencil set.

Maybe you want to make an elegant drawing. Or, you could just stencil on some well chosen words. The options range from nothing more than signing your name in a lush ink scrolling font to decorating the entire card.

But hand drawing or printing text isn’t for everyone. Sometimes, we need a little assistance.

Templates, photos and more will help flesh out that card. A little bit of non-bleeding glue dots or spray adhesive will help here. Scrapbookers know all the tricks of the trade, so seek out some advice from those who maintain one. They’ll point you to just the right chalks, rub-ons, photo corners and more to create that perfect card.

Most of all, remember the whole idea of making your own card: to express the unique relationship between you and your Valentine. That’s only possible when your card shows them the unique feelings you have for that special person.