A Valentine's Day Card for Coloring

Happy Valentine's day, what's left of it!  We had a nice day; both girls had parties at their school and Jo exchanged valentines with her friends.  This year we made a valentine with a coloring theme.  Josephine loves to draw pictures of herself with her favorite stuffed lamb, and we wanted to give her friends something they might be able to use to make a little art of their own.  I was also inspired by this valentine.  I started by asking Jo to draw a picture that she'd want to make into a card.  Then I asked her to write "From, Josephine," on another sheet of paper (because her writing takes up more space than she had room for on her drawing).

She explained that in the drawing she is holding lamb, and to the right she drew hearts.  Above and to the right of her head is something called, "fibber island."  No idea!  But, she thought of it, so I like it.  

Next we took a picture of her drawing and opened it in a simple photo editing program  We used Irfanview.  We cropped the photo, adjusted the contrast and brightness to reduce any shadows on the paper, and then decreased the color depth to (2-bit) black and white.  Then we copied the edited photos into Word and arranged them with the text (including the words, "Have a colorful Valentine's Day!" on the upper left).  Once the layout looked good we copied it over four times and printed four to a page.  We used pink and purple construction paper to print to, because those are Jo's favorite colors and what she requested.  

Our final step was to punch a hole next to her hand, put a crayon through and tape it to the back. We added a little strip of stickers taped to the bottom.  Jo was excited because she thought it looked like a page from a coloring book starring her and lamb. That gave us an idea to start working on a coloring book based on her drawings.  Hope you had a great day!