Valentines for seniors

It’s been a couple of years since I made valentines for my local Meals on Wheels chapter. But this year I made a group of cards for a different organization — one that supports senior citizens throughout Minnesota. I wanted to share them before Valentine’s Day, but better late than never.

With everything going on in the world, our country, and particularly in my state, I wanted to make valentines that had a little more meaning. I started with the scratch papers I used to clean off my grayer during previous gel print sessions. I cut free-hand hearts from the papers (a total of 20 hearts) and used a variety of Posca acrylic markers to add a stitched border around each heart.

For the sentiment I started by finding scraps of card stock that coordinated with each heart. Well, coordinate might not be the best word. I tried to find a color in each heart that I could pull out with the sentiment strips. It was satisfying to use up some of the small bits of card stock I always seem to save.

Anyway, once I had chosen the colors, I used a stamp set with a labeler-style alphabet to spell out the phrase “Do small things with great love.” I didn’t worry about lining up each letter perfectly; obviously I was going for an imperfect style with these cards. After all the words were stamped, I cut out each word, leaving a narrow border of colored card stock. 

I decided to use sheet music for the background, so I paged through an old songbook I have (I think it’s from the early 1900s) to find some pages that were visually appealing. I also scanned the lyrics to make sure they weren’t religious or offensive. Then I tore the pages (gasp!) into background panels for the cards.

For the card bases, I chose a card stock color that I thought looked nice with each heart; some “match,” and some don’t. I had planned to make all the cards in a landscape layout, but a few of the hearts were too tall. (These are A2 cards, which are 4-1/4” x 5-1/2”.) For the landscape cards, I tore the sheet music into a rough rectangle, leaving about 1/4” of the card base visible on all sides. For the cards with a portrait layout, I used the same size piece of music but glued it across the middle of the card and trimmed off the extra on the sides.

I glued down each heart in the middle of the card base and then added the words for the sentiment on the heart. Normally I would’ve used foam tape to adhere the words, but the organization requests non-bulky cards so I went with liquid glue. I also wanted to add some little embellishment so I pulled out a sheet of finely detailed gold stickers that I’ve had for ages. They were a fun little accent, and I managed to use the whole sheet. Yippee!

I was pleased with how these cards turned out (though I do sometimes wonder if cards like this don’t look “nice” enough). I also made a few valentines for friends and family, but those will be for my next post.

Thanks for stopping by!