Valentines

Last weekend, other than watching parts of the Super Bowl, the girls and I made valentines. Using a marbled paper project idea that I clipped from our local newspaper last summer, we took shaving cream (thanks Dad!), food coloring, a squeegie, and lots of pastel-colored cardstock, and spent an hour in the back yard enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. Not to mention that Dad had an Ikea bookshelf to put together inside, so this was also a good way to keep us out of his way.

The process was very easy, though I recommend dressing everyone in playclothes because we all got messy. First, spray an ample amount of shaving cream onto a cookie sheet. Next, drop a few drops of food coloring into the shaving cream. Using a tool of some sort (a toothpick or a fork work well), swirl the food coloring around in the shaving cream to create an interesting, marbled design. Then press a piece of cardstock on top of the shaving cream, and after taking the cardstock off of the shaving cream, squeegie it so that all remnants of the shaving cream have been removed. What is left is a lovely marbled design imprinted on the cardstock paper.

At first I tried

to keep the process controlled, but before long Rebecca and Elliot were doing the whole thing themselves. They found the little bottles of food coloring to be absolutely irresistable, and when I let the girls have free reign over the quantity used in each successive swirling, the results were brilliant! We kept the hose nearbye for rinsing the squeegie of shaving cream, among other things. At one point Rebecca accidently stepped into the shaving cream cookie sheet, but she rinsed her shoes off with the hose, wiped dried them in the grass, and we were good to go.

After the paper dried, we cut it into heart shapes, glued the hearts to red lace doilies, and added a few heart stickers for effect. Now the girls have valentines to give to their grandparents, and Rebecca has plenty to bring to her preschool class on Friday.

Happy Valentine's Day!