Upcycling those old Valentines

Now that the “thrill” of Valentine’s Day is over….what do you do with all the sweetness that came home from school?  The candy is all eaten, of course, and now to deal with the 3 bags of cute little cards and pencils, etc.  I feel bad chucking the bags into the recycling bin, like I usually do, so decided to actually take the time to sit down with some scotch tape and (quickly) save this little reminder, not only of the kids’ friends, but also the popular characters and fads of the moment.  Someday that will be interesting to see.  It’s like a time-capsule.  I always have to smile when I see valentines with the same characters that were around when I was young….Cabbage Patch Kids, and uh, um, that’s all I can remember.  Maybe Transformers?  And a few Disney things.   Anyways, all I did was grab some page protectors, then I laid the valentines out, face up on a sheet of paper for the measurement.  I didn’t want to glue them to the paper, because I thought it would be nice to see the backs, to see which little friend sent which little card.  So I taped the cards to each other, then flipped them over and taped a few places where they met, so I could just slip it into the page protector and now see both sides of the little valentines!  I didn’t worry about using acid free tape or anything, just did it to get it done!  It took longer for me to write this paragraph than it did to tape the valentines together!

And what about the Upcycling you ask?  We found a cute idea on Pinterest to make with some of the envelopes and Valentines that we didn’t want to save.  We are calling them Edge Biters or Corner Munchers….they are cool and different BOOKMARKS! Here’s the link where I found it: http://nheilke.com/blog/2011/02/corner-page-bookmarks-3/, I didn’t check it out right before we made ours, so ours are a little simpler and less professional looking.  Gather up some old valentines, punches, scissors, glue stick and some envelopes (ours were from the Valentines that Grandma mailed to us, definitely our most-looked-forward to tradition of V-day).  First, cut off the corners of the envelopes for the muncher’s heads.

Punch out circles from valentines, or white and black paper for the eyes.  For the teeth you can freehand it, or use a heart punch and use the points of them for the teeth.  After a few trials, what I did was cut a corner from a white envelope, making it larger than the colored ones, and then cut the teeth out, and slipped it inside, that was a lot easier.

These cute little guys just slip onto the corner of your page, to keep your place!!