4 Steps to Easy Kid-Created Valentines on the Computer

Valentine’s Day has always been an excuse to bring out the crafty. As a kid, I always loved making my own Valentines because it meant taking out every single stamp, stamp pad, sticker (puffy, scratch and sniff, shiny…), and doily (heart ones and round ones, of course!) to adorn my cut paper hearts to hand out to friends whose names were written in metallic marker on the front. When I was done, the kitchen table may have been a disaster but I was proud of my works of art before me. It probably doesn’t surprise you that my kids are the exact same way. Or at least we have been until this year.

This year Shutterfly asked if we might consider creating class Valentines with their Valentine’s Day Cards for Kids and while my traditional self wasn’t sure, the kids jumped at the idea! After homework was done one afternoon, we sat down to talk about Valentine’s Day and to create our cards. In a short amount of time, we were done!

1. Choose your card

We sat down at the computer and browsed the 10 cards in the line together. Just as I was wondering if they were too young for my 5^th grader, Emily, who dislikes the cute and leans towards something more sophisticated, I was interrupted with her saying, “That one, Mommy” as her 3^rd grade brother pointed out his selection. Easy. Done. Just enough cards to choose from for it not to be overwhelming in a nice variety of styles that appeal to your average elementary school age kid. Hooray!

2. Select a photo

We took a look at the card layout and talked about what photo would work best. Emily’s Striped Love card features a horizontal layout while her brother’s Outta This World one has a square space for a picture. With a request for a baseball photo, my 3^rd grader found the photo he wanted to use in a matter of seconds, uploaded, and tweaked it using the editing tools in a matter of seconds. His sister’s desire to include our chickens, dog, and a photo of herself proved a bit more time consuming but thanks to PicMonkey, she created a collage that was pure photo magic!

3. Customize

There may not be stamps, stickers, doilies, or metallic markers to customize a Shutterfly card creation but both kids loved tinkering with the font types, sizes, and colors to get that just-right look for their cards. My blue-loving son quickly realized that having a blue name on the front of his card just wouldn’t work. Neither would certain shades of green. He enjoyed the trial and error that came with choosing just the right color that he liked before moving on to fonts. Emily was after a cursive type font and getting a preview of her choices in the drop down menu.

4. Preview

Before placing any Shutterfly order, the site asks you to preview your creation. We talked about how the preview feature helps us proofread and make sure everything is correct before ordering.

While the process of creating cards was easy, one limitation with the Valentine’s Day Cards for Kids is that they only come in set amounts of 12, 25, 50, 75, etc. For my son’s class, 24 cards is perfect so ordering 2 sets of 12 is just fine but Emily’s class has 28 kids. 24 cards is too few to have one for everyone and 50 is way too many.

To remedy that problem, I contacted Customer Service via live chat and they were able to assist me in getting the number that Emily needed. But even though Customer Service was helpful and fairly fast, this added to the time it took for us to complete our order.

Shutterfly is offering 50% off hard cover books and 30% off everything else with the code SWEETSALE until Tuesday, February 10. Order by Monday, February 9 (7 pm ET / 4 pm PT) and choose expedited shipping to get your items in time for Valentine’s Day.

Shutterfly provided gift codes for my children to create their class Valentines. All opinions are my own and based on our experience. No compensation was received for this post.