Valentine Bookmarks

What fun we had with this year's Valentine photos!  At first my oldest, Avery, was not at all interested in doing picture valentines.  I was of course disappointed, but was all set to buy him the valentines from the store.   Then next day after school I was talking to my daughter about how she was going to get to paint for her photos and my oldest says, "Can we do pictures of me blowing a bubble?"  Apparently he has gotten really good at blowing bubbles with his gum lately and is excited about it.  Of course I used the opportunity to talk him into doing picture valentines.  YES!  Check out that bubble!  He really has gotten good at blowing bubbles.

 

 My daughter, Natalie, is almost always a good sport when I want to take some photos.  And when there is paint involved she really gets excited!  She had on some cute jeans so I told her to go get her red shirt on.  She came out of the dressing room wearing this frilly dress.  Okay.....that works too.  She is such a girly girl.  I have a major in Art, so I have palettes, brushes and paints on hand.

My littlest guy, Cameron, is a different challenge all together.  Sometimes he wants nothing to do with the camera.  I still take photos of him because he is cute even when he is crying., but I don't want to make valentines out of those, so his photos were a little bit less planned than the other kids'.  I had him all dressed in a plaid shirt and work boots and he did not want pictures that day.  The next day though he was being all silly and happy wearing the cute little tool-belt so that is when we did his Valentine photos.

 

 Next was coming up with the cheesy sayings.  I had trouble coming up with sayings I thought were cheesy enough.  Thankfully I have great family and friends to help me with that.  Then I put 2 bookmarks side by side in PhotoShop and being always thrifty I sent them to the lab to be printed on a 4"x6".  When the package arrived I just had to cut them in half to have 2"x6" bookmarks.  That size is just right.

I took the kids to the store to pick out ribbon for the bookmarks.  Each of them got to pick out a spool.  Avery's favorite color is green, Natalie chose pink, and Cameron chose brown (with a little help).  I think the part they liked best was choosing the beads to put on the ribbons.  In this photo my husband is helping Cameron by holding the ribbon while he puts the beads on..

Then they each wrote their names on the Valentines and taped candy to them.  I think one of the reasons Avery didn't want to do photo Valentines was because he thought he wouldn't be able to give candy with them.  He was very happy to see that he gets to give candy to his friends at school.