Easy Handmade Valentine's- At The Last Minute!

If you're a bit behind on creating a special gift to give a loved one from your child on Valentine's Day tomorrow, I have a great, easy idea for you. 

After finding this handprint flower pin on Pinterest, I decided that it would be a perfect gift to send to family for Valentine's Day, however, I knew that I only had one shot at getting my daughter to sit still long enough to make a painting. So, after nap time on Tuesday, I smocked Lizzy up and pulled out some Crayola washable kid's paint that I purchased at Michaels, as well as a sheet of watercolor paper (you can use a regular heavier weight paper, but it tends to buckle more than watercolor paper.)

This was our second attempt, which turned out quite well. I didn't really expect Lizzy to hate finger paint, so I was lucky to get something that resembles a flower! 

After the image was dry, I put it on my scanner and scanned it in at 300dpi (I had to weigh the page down quite a bit to get it to lay flat on the glass.) I opened the JPG file in Photoshop Elements, touched up some of the smudges & changed the background to a true white for printing. After that was complete, I wanted to add a little 'note' from Lizzy, so I turned to the Elle's Studio January digital cut file. I pulled out the PNG files for the 'love' word and the hearts, recolored them and added them around the flower. 

Once the PNG files were in place, I just added a bit of text to finish off the print. 

I printed the image out onto high resolution matte paper, trimmed the edges and popped them into an 8x10" frame to send as gifts. 

Today when I needed last minute Valentine's Day cards, I just resized the image to 4-1/4 x 5-1/2", printed, and popped them into an envelope! Plus, I have the original that I can frame for my office wall. 

Happy Valentine's Day and happy creating!