This Year's Valentines. 2013.

I am happy with how my daughter's Valentines turned out this year. The home-made paint I made dried quickly and ended up having a little bit of shimmer to it. This paint didn't flake off and crumble like last year's straight cornstarch and water recipe. 

Nye-Nye had a blast gluing the hearts to the folded cards and then adding with magic markers some illustrations of cats, flowers, fish and tractors to the cards.

I used a recipe I found here.

2 tablespoons of clear vinegar (we were out, so I just used wine vinegar and it was fine)

2 tablespoons of baking soda

1 tablespoon of cornstarch

1 teaspoon of corn syrup (luckily, we were at my Mama's house and she had some in her pantry)

food coloring

I put all of the ingredients (except the food dye) in separate yogurt containers. Nye-Nye dumped the vinegar and then the baking soda directly into the blender. We had fun watching it fizz.

Then, she added the cornstarch and the corn syrup and turned on the blender when I gave the okay. She did an excellent job making sure it was thoroughly blended together. I poured the paint into some yogurt containers and then added the food coloring. We ended up with two shades of red.

I dumped the red paint onto paper plates and let her go to town with the potato stamps.

Before, preparing the ingredients, I had spent less than 10 minutes carving out heart stamps from some sprouting potatoes my Mama had on hand.

The next day, I spent 30 minutes cutting out the hearts from the paper my daughter had stamped (she's still learning the concept of how to stamp and not just smear the paint). My Mama cut down some Scrap-booking paper to size and folded them into cards, while I cut.

I put some Tacky Glue into a pie plate and called over my kiddo. I showed her how to put glue on the back of the heart and then I let her put the heart wherever she wanted to on the card. She had loads of fun with this part (especially peeling off the glue from her fingers). I only moved the hearts, if they were hanging off the page and were not going to fit in the envelope.

After the cards dried, I gave her a marker to add some "details" to each card. I also showed her where to "sign her name" in the inside of the card. My Mother said I was working her too hard. I think she was fine.

I'll post a video of the final products on Valentine's Day. Here is a video of my Mother showing Nye-Nye how to stamp the paper...