From 2012:

So Sunday evening, after a marathon session of watching Series 2 of Doctor Who with the Boy (who between that and Harry Potter is becoming quite the Anglophile), we had the sudden realization that Tuesday was Valentines Day… oops!  I guess we need a bunch of cards for the classmates!

Yesterday after school we sat down to come up with Vday cards, and the Boy (first grade) has been obsessed with the idea of Valentine’s Monsters.  Well, he’s a boy, so monsters just come with the territory.  He had a blast designing his own cards, and with a little help from mom & Photoshop, here are the results!

How to make your own easy and personal homemade monster cards:

1. Have the kid design his own monster on a full sheet of paper.  We used pencil for the lines and colored with light colored markers. Have the monster hold his hand out, so that you can add your own real-life lollipop. (The Boy insisted on 3 different designs)
2. Write a pithy saying.   The boy decided on “Have a Yummy Valentine’s Day” for one, and “I’m watching you, Valentine” for the one with all the eyes.  OK, a little stalker-y, but he’s 6.  This isn’t supposed to be Hallmark!  He wrote out the saying, and signed the cards.
3. Scan the drawing and the words.  If you have photoshop or something similar, you can make the scanned drawing look a little cleaner by adjusting the Levels.  (Slide the left most slider slightly to the right, and the rightmost slider to the left, to remove shadows from the scan and darken the lines.)
4. Use a photo editing program to shrink down both pieces so you can fit approximately 8 cards on a page.  We used the same words with 2 of the monsters, to save time, since his writing isn’t exactly speedy.
5. Print on cardstock, and cut apart.
6. Use an exacto knife to cut two slits near the hand, and slide the lollipop through.

Basically, I had a bunch old fabric scraps that I had lying around the house (leftover cloth from Dragon Wings, the ends of his pants that I had cut off into shorts for summer, pieces of ribbon, that sort of thing).  I cut these into random shapes, both geometric and organic, not really worrying about neatness– there were circles, squares, spikes, and just random triangle like pieces, in a variety of colors and fabrics.

I had picked up a nice mixed pack of googly eyes in the Dollar Spot at Target the other day, so I added some random eyes to the mix.

I made a couple of large squares out of leftover brown fleece (from Perry the Platypus’ tail!) to serve as a base for the designs.

Then just let him go to town making up his own creatures.  We didn’t glue anything together (although you could certainly do so)– I just let him make up his monsters, then took pictures of them to ‘Save’ them (my little video game junkie understands that analogy!)

It was his idea to get some markers to add additional decorations and designs.

Then when he was finished, we just rolled up the cloth, with the pieces inside, and it went into his art box for future use!

First is a little monster/alien I’ve been doodling lately, hatching from his egg!    Second is the little monster, in holiday mode! Which do you like better?

Free Download of the Santa Monster, if you’d like to use it for holiday cards or crafting!  Just click through to flickr and download it there.