Even More Valentines

Have you ever been over to The Crafty Crow? It's an awesome website filled with great craft ideas for the kiddos. I stop by there at least four times a week. Its wonderful when Cate (the little girl I babysit) wants to try something new and we need inspiration. They are all about Valentines right now at The Crafty Crow. I saw this easy craft and thought it wold be perfect to fill that last half hour before Cate's dad came to pick her up. Ethan was home from school with strep throat (but had been dosed with antibiotics several times before Cate arrived, so don't worry!) so he joined the fun.

Both kids really loved painting with watercolors. I forget that just switching up the supplies can be so exciting for these little people.

They drew what was in their hearts first, then painted them. Cate painted a "crazy man" and her cat Pumpkin. Ethan first made the veins and arteries coming out of the heart (future medical illustrator perhaps?) then drew in his family, including my grandmother and great aunt who both recently passed away and the Ford Escape that Justin rented once for a business trip (??) I know, sort of random. But I love them!

If you have a 9 year old boy you may understand how awkward Valentine's Day can be. Hudson hates the store bought Valentines so we always have to come up with something that is not too mushy or lovey or "girlie" but still captures the essence of Valentine's Day. This year he drew a spaceship and I transferred it into a stamp, the same way I did the stamps for letterboxing earlier this year. Then I printed a simple message on the computer and he stamped away. We added the little heart stamp so it would be more "Valentiney". We folded each card, sealed the bottom and side with tape and he had a little pouch to place his goodies in for his schoolmates. (You can see it at the very top of the picture below.)

The nice thing is that he now had a cool spaceship stamp to use when we go letterboxong, or for whenever!

Stamps

My family likes to letterbox... a lot. If you haven't heard of it, it is a fun, free way to explore an area in a scavenger-hunt like way. There is more information here, at Atlas Quest, a letter boxing site, and a great article here, from Family Fun magazine. (The Family Fun article is what got us really intrigued in the activity.) What's great is that we can letterbox near home, and when we travel, so we print out clues before we go on our vacation in the Adirondacks. It adds a little something to our hikes, which we enjoy to begin with, and makes them even more fun. (Who can resist a challenge??)

Alex finding a hidden letterbox.

When we started 2 years ago, we just grabbed a stamp from our pile of stamps and used it represent our family when we "stamp in" the logbooks we find.

Hudson "stamping in" the logbook.

But while browsing through the logbooks we would see some really awesome hand cut stamps, and we always said we'd give it a try.

Someone elses's cool hand-cut stamps.

So, just recently I bought a Speedball Speedy Carve kit from Michael's and decided it was time to make our own. Now, why I didn't try sooner was beyond me, because it was sooooo easy. Now, I'm not saying that these stamps are perfect, but they came out pretty good and I'm pretty pleased with them!

The very first one I cut is the "Rumtum Cat". On Atlas Quest, when you log in you have a member name, and ours is Rumtum. (Sound familiar?) Rum Tum was the name of one of our cats...our favorite cat actually. The name has stuck with us, as you can see. Anyway, I made a Rumtum cat stamp so that we now have a "signature stamp" for our family for letterboxing. (I have to admit that carving the word RumTum backward reminded me a bit of the scene in The Shining when the kid walks around croaking "Redrum, redrum..." and then writes it on the back of the door and then the mom reads it in the mirror.... MURDER. Freaky movie!! One of my favorites.)

Then, realizing how easy this is, I transferred part of a drawing that Ethan did and made a stamp of that.See the little guy in the top right in the drawing? Well, here he is as a stamp.

Then my husband got in on the action and made a second Rumtum stamp...this one is an eyeball... so I guess we have options when letterboxing. And then I gave my niece a piece of the Speedy Cut block and let her draw a fairy on it. Then she wrote she name and I transferred it backwards onto the stamp. (You can see the progression of her stamp in the images we stamped with it... the bottom one was first. She wasn't happy with the eyes. So we fixed them. Then we added her name.) For all the stamps I cut a piece of plywood, stamped the image onto it and then glued the carved stamp block onto the backside.

This was a relatively quick project... Gabby's took about 10 minutes total from conception to stamping with it. And it was pretty easy. I think we'll keep trying to make new ones. I really like the idea of turning one of the kids drawings into a stamp. I have my eye on an R2D2 that Hudson drew. I'll keep you posted.