Valentines Potato Stamping

Yo, yo!

Okay, now that Valentines Day has come and gone, I'd like to share with you the Valentines that we put together for Ella Rose's preschool classmates.
In this post, you saw the teaser image of the hearts in production.

Well, what we did was create little stuffed hearts.
We simply machine sewed two hearts together (right sides touching and leaving a little inch or so open), flipped them inside and stuffed them with plushie stuffing material.
Ella Rose did most of the stuffing and then I sewed up the little opening:

Each heart was made of two different fabrics, one for each side.

Ms. Christine, the Peach Blossom teacher, had requested that we only put the name of the giver on the Valentines (no recipient names), so here's how we did that:

Daddy crafted a potato stamper using little knives and an eyeglass repair tool too!

Always remember to do the letters backwards~!

I've never done potato stamping before, but it really is such a nifty medium!
Using a sharpie as the "ink" for the "stamp", the names got stamped on the hearts:

Soft and plushie, they can double as baby pillows?

Ella Rose enjoyed that part of the production process too.
And I must say Dash and I loved it too!

Growing up with parents that were too busy, whenever Valentines Day rolled around, the most effort we made was going to the store and purchasing premade cards with whatever the latest kid-targeted brand was (Barbie, Jurassic Park, etc).

I remember once, we hadn't even had time to go to the store, and my mom randomly suggested that I just make some cards. I know her heart was in the right place, but it ended up being a very dismal experience for me. By that point in my life, I was so used to the creative process being taken over by companies and believed that prefabricated was uniform and therefore more beautiful, that my attempts were pathetic and depressing. I remember literally crying to my mom about how inferior my cards were...how they'd be the worst in the class! My mom tried to encourage me saying that homemade is heartfelt...but I feel she was forgetting the second half of the equation. If only I'd had the tools and know-how of actually creating something...how to work with paper, and color, and put things together. I didn't know a lick of it! In the end, I submitted my sloppy crayon scribbled cards (the best thing I could come up with was a squirrel with a nut saying "I'm Nuts About You") and just put my face down on my desk for the duration of the card exchange..

I remember that Valentines Day disaster very vividly and hope to imbue in my kiddos real knowledge on how to create things for themselves so that they don't have to rely on buying whatever they want or need. I think it's also a confidence booster, because you don't feel as helpless and consumption-dependent.

Anyway, sorry for the long-winded trip down memory lane.
Hope you all had a good V Day and that maybe this inspires some more crafting in your lives too!
Until next time, take care and Happy Potato Stamping!