Bee My Valentine!

Time to make Valentine's! Every year I throw Jane a Valentine party for her and her friends and am so busy getting that ready, that I neglect to help her make make Valentines for her and end up using store bought ones. Fine if that is your thing, you'll get no judgment from me! But nothing is sweeter than a handmade Valentine. So this year I remembered to included making Valentine's in the party prep. I showed Jane a bunch of options and she chose the Lollipop Flowers that were featured in Scrapbooks Ect. Magazine.  We decided that no kid Valentine is complete without a cheesy pun, so we decided to add the cute little flying bee and the sentiment "Bee My Valentine". They are inexpensive as all get out and cute as can bee!

To make your own bouquet of 24 lollipop flowers you'll first need to gather your supplies. I used my February issue of Scrapbooks Ect., One 12x12 sheet of Meadow Green Core'dinations cardstock, two 12x12 sheets of Doodlebug Designs paper that has bees on it (each sheet has 18 bees on it), Crop-A-Dile (or other hole punch), scissors, wire bending tool, white marker, 3" scallop punch, floral wire, hot glue gun and glue, 10 sheets of tissue paper (I used 3 sheets each of red and pink and 4 sheets of hot pink). And don't forget your bag of Dum-Dums! In my bag there were more than 24 suckers of red/pink/purple suckers.

So you just stack up your tissue paper the way you want it. I put my reds on the bottom, hot pink in the middle, and light pink on top. And then you punch it with your scallop punch. I don't know if mine was a little dull...or if cutting tissue paper is just difficult, but it caught in one place every time. So I had to kind of tear the paper out in that one spot and then push the blade back out to the starting position. Not a big deal...but made it a little tedious. I would suggest cutting all your scallops then moving on. Then you use the small hole punch to punch a hole in the center of your scallop. To get to the center, I had to bend my scallop in half and just kind of nip it with the hole punch. No big deal. You just want the hole to be just as big or slightly bigger than the stick..so the petals don't just fall off! Then make cut out a leaf and use it to trace 24 leafs and cut them all out. Have your child sign their name on the back and then they or you can write the sentiment on the front. Or the magazine has them printed...but I didn't figure that out!

Then you need to cut out all the little bees from your scrapbook paper, cut 24 3 inch lengths of floral wire, and use the larger hole punch to punch a hole in your leaf. I wrapped the wire around a screwdriver a few times to give it a curl and then pierced it through the leaf and then bent the end and hot glued it with a tiny dab of glue. I bent the other end and hot glued it to the bee. Then ease it onto your stick and voila!

I think for 24 Valentine's it cost about $6

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I think Jane's classmates are going to love receiving these!

And some buzzzzz for the upgraded Blogger! Wow...the changes they have made really are making a huge difference on the ease of blogging for me! Thanks!!