Valentine’s Day arrived this year and my youngest son requested basketball-themed valentines for his school party. For the last few years we have strived to send non-food, non-candy, and allergen-free valentines for school parties, in support of my nephew who has a lot of food allergies, and this year was no exception.
I found these basketball pens on Amazon and they came in a pack of 24. Of course, we only needed 30, so I ordered two packs.
We headed to Pinterest for ideas for cute things to put on cards. And we’re suckers for a cute pun!
Next I made these simple basketball cards in Adobe Illustrator. The back just says “Love," and my kid’s name on the same basketball image. I printed them on my home printer onto card stock and cut them out with a 2.5 inch circle punch. The punch I have is Martha Stewart’s brand and it’s an awesome punch, but it’s been discontinues. Here is one from Fiskars that will work great. FYI, a 2.5 inch circle fits perfectly on a wide-mouth mason jar lid.
I attached each pen to a tag using some washi tape that I had to buy because I’m not a frequent user of washi tape. I found some food-themed tape on clearance at JoAnn’s.
In hindsight, I just should’ve used clear tape because at times the washi tape covered up some of the words.
Here’s a breakdown of the cost of this year’s valentines:
basketball pens - $20.98/pack of 24
washi tape - $5.99 for 8 rolls from JoAnn’s, on clearance
card stock - already had
printer - already had
At the end of the day, each valentine came to just under $1 each.
I have a love/hate relationship with printers. After owning and working with printers from Canon, Epson, Brother, Xerox, and HP, I always end up with HP because the print quality and color management has always proven to be closest to what I see on my calibrated monitor. Right now I have an HP Envy color inkjet printer. The print quality is okay, but nothing compared to a HP photo printer I had years ago (I STILL miss that printer). But ALL printers have their moments. Mine currently doesn’t want to connect to my desktop computer, it will only print from my phone. ::massive eye-roll:::
Here you can read about valentines I have created for previous years.
Does your family celebrate valentines day? If so, what traditions do you follow?