OK, so I bet it's no surprise we make our own Valentine's cards. It's become a tradition since D was born, and he's constantly making Valentine's throughout the year! Generally, I draw something in Illustrator and print them, and D stickers, draws, and kisses each one. Most our Valentine's are sent to family plus a few friends.

Now that D is in kindergarten and has to give a card to every student, I wanted to try something different. More importantly, I wanted him to be the "creator" not just the decorator of the cards. So, with some team work, D and I made these…

and it was super fun! I've always been interested in block printing, and this seemed like a great exploratory project to test the waters. It was so easy. I purchased all the tools and supplies individually, but I just discovered you can buy a starter Speedball block printing kit.

You start with what seems like a giant piece of a pink rubber eraser, transfer your design and begin "carving".

D drew the design on the block, and I carved around it. He inked it and pressed the paper. It was that easy. He did get bored of this design about a third of the way through and created another design…

very simple and sweet. We tried to mix some pink paint with little success. It brought back a flood of memories [and anxiety] of my Colory Theory class in college. I forgot how to mix paint! It comes back after the first disaster, but the attention span for mixing paint is pretty short as you can imagine.

F&N