Crafting: Vintage Valentine Placemats (free printables)

Making Christmas placemats from old cards got me thinking about vintage Valentine's...  I thought placemats composed of old school valentines would be really cute. And so easy, as it turns out!

Because they are laminated they are easy to wipe off and perfect for a kids' table. My girls love reading the valentines on their mats and sharing the often silly greetings with the rest of is. Keeps them occupied, but these are also great conversation starters for adults. For instance, it was interesting to see the traditional role models reflected in these vintage cards. Some of these would never fly now!

Rather than finding or duplicating vintage valentines to print out, I found a bunch of free vintage images online and composed some layouts. I've got four different versions, each with unique valentines. If you'd like some vintage valentine placemats for yourself you can download these images (they are very large files!) and print them at 12"x18".  Costco photo conveniently prints images at that size. 

Then just laminate and trim, and enjoy!

Vintage Valentine's Day Placemats

Printables: Pink and Gold Puppy Party Birthday Papers

I loved designing this 5x7 single card puppy party invitation for Tess's birthday! Isn't this a cute little pooch? She was inspired by our own yellow Lab. 

I wanted a cute, yet simple and modern face and couldn't resist adding a party hat and bow tie to make it more festive. This little puppy became the mascot for our Pink and Gold Puppy Party, adorning labels and tags and even cornhole game boards.

I was inspired by some morrocan cement tiles I was looking at for another project and so I created a bone and paw pattern in pink and gold for a suite of party printables. I love the look of the puppy face against this background.

The party invitation includes form fields you can edit for your own party details, and the suite includes extras such as these cute photo folders (I used them with "wallet sized" prints from Costco but they'd be great with instant prints from your phone or camera), puppy face tags, poster sized puppy faces for cornhole boards or posters, thank you tags, thank you cards, party hat templates, doggie bag tags, and lemonade bottle labels.

I also included my template for tracing this little puppy face on a canvas bag, t-shirt or backpack for a fun coloring activity at the party. Our guests loved coloring these bags!

In addition, I've included a huge selection of patterned bone and paw papers, which can be used for lining trays, cutting buntings, wrapping bottles or candy bars and anything else you can think of. You can purchase these party printables in my Etsy Shop.

For a little extra i adeed some gold glitter to the invitation and party hats. Click through for a quick how-to!

Party: Pink and Gold Puppy Birthday

Somebody had a birthday party! And she wanted a puppy party! Makes sense since our family recently adding a darling yellow lab to our family. So this little lab became the mascot for Tess's puppy birthday party, with a dash of pink and gold added by me to make it extra fun for girls.

I had so much fun designing this birthday party! I happened to be looking at concrete tiles in Moroccan patterns at the same time, so I incorporated some fun geometric patterns with paw and bone motifs as backgrounds for all the printables.

I made paper party hats with gold tissue paper pom poms and a dash of gold glitter, puppy ear headbands for the guests to wear (I hung these on a bronze "tree" with tissue tassels), traced puppy drawings on blank canvas bags for the guests to color, found white puppy plush animals to wear little party hats and go home as the party favor, and of course came up with a puppy inspired party menu.

There was Pink Paw Lemonade (my re-labeling of Simply Lemonade individually sized bottles), PBandJ sandwiches cut in the shape of dog bones, a gold dog bowl (which I spray painted) filled with strawberries, "doggie bags" filled with white milk chocolate bones we made with molds, and of course, birthday cake.

I have been loving the naked cake trend so I tried one with moderate results.  It tasted amazing as it was vanilla buttermilk filled with strawberry buttercream and topped with vanilla buttercream. But I left the decorating until the minutes the guests were arriving so the giant fondant bone was a pretty rushed effort. Tasted great though!

The girls had a great time dressing as puppies with their puppy ear headbands and some face painting provided by Tess's older sisters. They also colored their puppy bags and played a game of cornhole for small prizes.

I created a puppy face line drawing on the bags to make it easy to color.  I printed a stencil of the drawing on my Cricut machine but you could also print and trace the drawing on bags (it's included with my party printables). 

I decorated the cornhole boards with plain white paper and poster sized puppy faces to tie in with the theme. (My party printables file includes these large puppy faces set up to print two on a 20"x30" print.)

What fun we had! 

As a thank you we took pictures of each girl dressed as a puppy and holding her new plush puppy, which I printed wallet sized and sent home in a photo folder.

Tess looked adorable in her pink pleather and gold Maren dress and our lab was the perfect photo prop. I loved celebrating another year with this little girl!

Party Resources: (including affiliate links)

Tess's Dress:  The Maren Dress sewn by Aesthetic Nest
Birthday Invitation and Printables: Pink Puppy Printables from Aesthetic Nest on Etsy
Blank Canvas Bags
Fabric Markers: Sanford Stained by Sharpie Fabric Markers, Assorted Colors, 8-Pack
Puppy Ear Headbands Tutorial
Gold Tissue Paper for party hat pom poms and tassels
Plush Puppy Favors: Douglas Cuddle Toys Bichon
Tess's Yellow Lab Plush: Aurora Myoni Yellow Lab
Cornhole Boards to decorate with puppy face
Dog Bone Cookie Cutter for PBandJ sandwiches
Dog Bone Chocolate Mold for white chocolate doggie bag treats
White Chocolate Candy Melts

Printables: Mustache Valentines (Free Download)

I've finally done it. I've given into the Mustache trend. Audrey was excited about some foam mustaches we found at Target so I created a quick printable Valentine to go with them. This is a great candy-free option for the card exchange. I was thinking of a line something like, "there's no disguising it, I want you to be my Valentine," but thanks to my Instagram friend, Mae, I landed on "I Mustache you to be my Valentine." Perfect!

This Mustache Valentine is a free printable for you. It will print two 5"x7" Valentines. The file is set up to print double-sided (be sure to flip on the long end and/or check to see the reverse is printed right-side up before you crank out a class-full).

You can use glue dots or tape to affix a purchased stick-on mustache over the mustache silhouette on the card. I found mine in the Valentine section at Target, but you can find some online (Amazon has some furry mustaches--affiliate link here). 

You can also cut your own foam mustache stickers if you have a Cricut or similar machine using this mustache .svg file and black sticky-back foam. 

I am laughing thinking about a class full of gradeschoolers wearing their fake 'staches. 

These would be cute with a mustache lollipop or wax candy mustache too.

Fold the Valentines in half and use some black and white Washi to tape them closed, and you're all set!

So, I really mustache ask you....