It’s hard to avoid the sugar rush during Valentine’s days for the kids but I’m going to do my part by making these homemade cards that don’t involve candy.
Somehow Valentine’s day at school these days has turned into Halloween for my kids.
It is no longer about the sentiment anymore and all about the candy.
This year, I’ve decided to just not partake in this chaos by not sending my kids to school with pounds of sugary treats.
These printable and SVG templates for these kids Valentine’s day cards are all FREE and available in my resource library.
Materials for DIY Kids Valentine’s Cards
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Cardstock – I like to use medium weight cardstock with a colored core. It flexes easily and doesn’t have white frayed edges.
Best deals on recommended cardstock:
- Neenah Collections Assorted Set from Amazon – Basic primary colors, great starter pack, perfect weight for most papercraft projects
- Metallic Shimmer Assorted Set from Amazon – This set is a little lighter in weight but the colors are beautiful in 3D
- Cardstock Warehouse Brand on Amazon – I love the quality of all the matte colored cardstock with Cardstock Warehouse. It is my go-to brand for individual matte colors that I might need
- Assorted Pink Set from Paper Paper – This is a must-have for paper flower makers. The variety is perfect to create a bouquet.
- Assorted Purple Set from Paper Paper – This is another must-have for paper flower makers. I love the variety of finishes in this pack.
- Metallic Variety Set from Paper Paper – I don’t know any avid paper crafter that doesn’t use Stardream metallics line of shimmer paper. It is the only metallic cardstock line that I know of that has such variety and has colored cores.
Cutting Machine – I use a Cricut. Check out my recommendations for Cricut machines and accessories for beginners for more info.
Tips for Handmade Valentine’s Cards
I’m going to preface this by saying this project is a labor of love. If you want to just get a bunch of Valentines for your child’s first-grade class done, just buy a pack of ready-made ones. But my son was super excited to have “cool” valentines to share with his classmates and forgot it didn’t include candy.
That said, I did try to optimize my designs so it wouldn’t be too much of a hassle.
If you are using your Cricut to make these, I find the Print and Cut functionality to be super confusing these days in Design Space.
The TicTacToe card is probably the most complex out of all of these to make especially if you are trying to Print then Cut.
The standard way to Print and cut is to Select everything and then “Flatten”. (Flatten attaches everything selected and prints it)
The problem is this it then prints the cut lines where the crayons slot in.
What you need to do is change the Fill of the words and grid to “Print” but make sure the slot lines remain as “Cut” only.
Then after this is done, you need to “Attach” all the pieces.
I tried to leave the graphics saved in the most flexible format for my free template.
But this will take some mental gymnastics on the first try.
You can do it!
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