Homemade Valentines (and Paper Source!)

Since we had some photos from the Valentine’s shoot, I decided to create a photo valentine from scratch. I’ve always wanted to, but haven’t had the tools. Now that I have PhotoShop Elements (PSE), I decided to give it a shot.

I was frustrated at first because I didn’t know how to create a collage in PSE, and then my friend said, “How about downloading a free template?” Oh, right…

I found this collage template on Tidy Mom’s blog. I plugged in my photos and downloaded Vanessa’s Valentine font. I’ve only downloaded fonts to Word before, and I was pleased that the font just showed up in the PSE font library right after downloading it. Easy peasy.

I liked that I could make the “happy heart day” work with the photo.

The photo layout is 4×4 and I plugged four on an 8.5×11 Word doc and printed them at Staples. Next time I will print them on photo paper through mpix, though, because I think it would turn out a little crisper than card stock.

Now for the fun part: card creation.

I was a Paper Source junkie when we lived in California so I was ecstatic to learn that a Paper Source recently opened close to where we live.

I love their selection of card stock and envelope colors and sizes. And they even have some pearlescent finishes.

And no other place has a better selection of stamping and embossing stuff.

They also have all kinds of ready-made stuff, like cards and cute little gifts, too. It’s a fun place!

The boys were with me so I couldn’t go too crazy, but I picked up some red 5x5ish sized cards and envelopes, and I couldn’t resist some red and white baker’s twine either. I also got some cute little heart ornaments. More on those later.

First I cut down the photo collage.

Then I used some white card stock I already had and cut 4.5 x 4.5 squares to border the photo collage. I always use a tape runner for cards because it has the best hold.

This tape runner refill had a mind of its own…

I felt like it needed a little something to finish it off so…

I used that baker’s twine to tie a bow in some heart buttons I had leftover from a 4th of July project. I love it when I can use leftovers! I hot glued it to the top of the card.

Then I let the boys do their thing on the back. They used markers and Thomas the Train stamp runners. Nothing else says “Happy Valentine’s Day” like Thomas, James and Percy, right?