{DIY} Easy Valentine's Day Cards (with a freebie)

For the last month, Shelby has been looking for the PERFECT Valentine's Day cards to take to school. She's poured over Pinterest looking for something she loved, but couldn't find exactly what she was looking for. This weekend she started to panic, since her class party was less than a week away. That's when she asked me if I'd design some cards for her. She said, "Mom, I want one of your printables. Can you just make me something?" How could I say no to that?

She knew what colors she wanted to use; she knew what she wanted the cards to say " You are BEARY sweet"; and she knew she wanted to attached a pack of gummy bears to the finished product. With this in mind, I came up with a design for her.

The things is ... she didn't love them. She liked them a lot, but she had a few other ideas she wanted to incorporated (mostly, she wanted a gummy bear image rather than the bear I used). In the end, we made a few compromises and came up with two designs we were both happy with.

I uploaded the the finished file to be printed at a 24-Hour Fedex/Kinkos  not far from our house. I didn't want to print out home because they had such bright, saturated colors ... plus I was too lazy to look for bright white cardstock. I did a quick search online and found a 15% off coupon for Kinkos and managed to print all the cards for her class, plus her math class and friends in other classes for just $8.

Then, I got some gummy bears at Target (I used the Cartwheel app and got the candy for 10% off the sale price).

I cut the cards out and Shelby stapled on the candy. I wanted to tie them on with a bow, but Shelby told me that "would be too much."

And now we're ready Valentine's Day with days to spare. So awesome!

It's not too late to make your own cards. In case you'd like to use these cards yourself, you can download a PDF version here.