2023 marked 10 years that I’ve been working with Laura on all of her creative and fun holiday cards. Here you can see every fun holiday card Laura and I have worked on together. This year was no exception when it came to something fun.
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.
Since I married into a Chinese-American family, we celebrate the Lunar New Year with my in-laws every year. Lots of the Chinese traditions revolve around food and what it symbolizes. There are also some superstitions that many who celebrate follow to ensure they will have a healthy and prosperous year.
Happy Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate! This is not a holiday we typically do anything for; feeling that’s it’s mostly driven by retail companies. That being said, creating fun valentines for school parties has become something I do look forward to each year.
This year my oldest son proclaimed “we don’t do valentines in middle school.” I rolled my eyes at him, but whatever.
At least my second grader still does valentines! We opted to go with non-food valentines again this year right when Sticker Mule was having a great sale on 3x3 inch holographic stickers. So he and I worked on a quick and fun design and I got them ordered. Have I mentioned that he loves bacon?
Next up was some kind of card to put the stickers on to give out at his party. We needed something for folks to know who these were from. I created a 4x5 inch card so I could print four on a page. I added a bacon border that matched the sticker and added his name. I had them printed and trimmed at my local Office Depot and they were ready within an hour.
I LOVE how these turned out! Here’s a breakdown of the pricing:
50 vinyl, holographic stickers, roughly 3x3 inch - on sale - $31.10 (incl tax, shipping was free)
12 pages printed on card stock (4 cards per page) and trimmed - $11.84
double-sided tape (we already had some)
Total: $42.94
That came out to $.89 cents per valentine for 48 valentines. There are only 25 kids in my son’s class, but he will also give one to his teacher, the class aides, specials teachers (music, PE, art, Spanish, etc), and the two administrative assistants. The minimum order for the deal on Sticker Mule was 50 stickers, so even if he only gave them out in his class, we’ll have leftover stickers to share with friends or I can list them in my sticker store for a few bucks.
Overall, this wasn’t crazy expensive and I love coming up with a fun way to do non-food, non-candy, allergen-free valentines.
