School Valentine’s Day Candy Alternative

My family includes a third grader, a first grader, and a kindergartener, and kids that age traditionally exchange Valentines.  Usually, they are those little cards with characters on them, but we like to make something more fun and original.  When my oldest was in kindergarten, we made leis I found online.  We spent several hours constructing them from yarn, die cut hearts, and one-inch lengths of coffee stir straws.  Now that there are 3 children in the family, such elaborate projects are not practical, but I still wanted to do something special that the children would enjoy.

My main objective is to stay away from candy.  Kids these days get way too much candy as it is, and I don’t want to add to the problem by giving it out to their classmates.  (I’m sure their parents would appreciate that as well.)  Another objective is to avoid giving out small trinkets that aren’t all that useful and often end up on the floor, followed by the trash.
So, we went with pencils, the perfect junk and candy alternative!  Kids are always in need of more this time of year, and I hate that teachers end up spending their own money on school supplies, so it seemed like the perfect choice!  We bought a large box of pencils on Amazon, plus a box of eraser caps for the teachers.  You don’t necessarily need to buy Valentine’s Day themed pencils.  In fact, the embellishment we added is enough.

For the embellishment, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut several heart-shaped pencil toppers (available in their online store here).  I had each child write “From [name]” on the hearts, then they put them on the pencils.  My daughter found that bending the upper circle in half helped it stay on the metal part of the pencil better.  If that doesn’t help, you can always add a small piece of tape to hold it in place.

We wanted to include a gift for the teachers as well.  I cut a small card stock bag with a heart design that came with my Silhouette (here is another design that would also work).  Then we filled each one with a handful of pencils and eraser caps.  This is, in my opinion, a great teacher gift because it is useful and ultimately saves them from buying supplies for their class with their own money.

That’s what our children’s classmates and teachers will be receiving this year.  What are your plans this year?

Self-Made Bow Card Tutorial

In gearing up for the holiday season, I’ve been coming up with gift packaging ideas to offer in my shop to go with my products.  Bows are small, and I haven’t really seen any good packaging options for just one or two bows.  Little ones would fit into a small cardboard jewelry box, but when I searched online for packaging for my bigger bows I came up empty.  Mass-produced bows come on bow cards, but I’ve only seen 2-3 types for sale and in only black or white.  I decided to make my own cards, sized just for my products and in a variety of colors.

Would you like to know how I made them?  If you have a Silhouette Cameo, you can make them as well!

I started by ungrouping this design to obtain the hanging slot at the top.  I then drew a curved rectangle.  In case you’re new to Silhouette Studio, the red arrow in the screenshot below points to that tool:

To make the little slots that the clips are inserted in, use the regular rectangle tool:

It’s that simple!  The next step was to size them to fit my products.  I made them slightly bigger than the bows and also sized to fit as many of a single style on a page.  The screenshots show one of each, but I also created files for each style with several to a page.  To do that, you have to know how to group.  This was tricky for me to get the hang of.  You need to select the entire card and select “group.”  Then click somewhere else on the screen, and then click on the design to select it, then copy (CTRL-C).  Open a new file then paste (CTRL-V).  You can then use the “replicate” option in the “Option” menu to duplicate the design several times until the page is filled.

So, there you go!  If you make your own bows and other accessories, you can make cards for all of your bows and other accessories and in any colors you want!  You can also add a label with your business name, logo and URL and you’re all set for a craft show!