DIY Comic Book Valentine

With Valentine's Day just a few days away, I'm sharing these DIY Valentines I made for my little boy's class.

I love using pictures to personalize gifts, and just to make it a little bit different, I decided to turn his photo into a comic book image. Sounds complicated? That's what I thought at first, until I found this video tutorial on You Tube. All I needed was my photo editing software (Adobe Photoshop Elements 9) and a printer. Trying to learn new tricks to edit photos can be a little intimidating at first, but it's really fun once you get the hang of it. :)

They are actually mini envelopes with M&M's Fun Size Milk Chocolate Candies inside.

I used these heart stickers I found in my stash to close them. Pretty cute, right? ;)

I made the starburst background with the help of this tutorial. And the paper is from Shery K Designs and I downloaded it from this site.

I liked my little boy's comic book image so much that I decided to use it for his teachers' gifts.

As you can see, I used the comic book image as a candy wrapper for Kit Kat chocolate bars. I love how they turned out! :)

The fonts I used are Badaboom from Dafont.com and Red State Blue State from Blambot.com.

I'm totally hooked on making these comic book images I think I might use this idea for gifts. Hmmmm... Maybe for Father's Day or Grandparents Day? Or maybe even a party favor? What do you think?

I linked this post to these wonderful parties:
All Things Thursday Blog Hop : Posed Perfection  |  Bewitch Me & Titi Link Party : TitiCrafty by Camila  |  Freedom Fridays with All My Bloggy Friends : Love Bakes Good Cakes  |  Friday Flash Blog Link Party : The Jenny Evolution  |  Friday Link Party : The Pin Junkie  |  Frugal Crafty Home Blog Hop : Carrie This Home  |  Give Me The Goods Monday Link Party : Rain on a Tin Roof  |  Inspiration Monday: I Should Be Mopping The Floor  |  Inspire Me Monday : Create With Joy  |  Ladies Only Blog Share : Mommifried  |  Link Party Tuesday : A to Zebra Celebrations  |  My Favorite Things Saturdays : A Time for Seasons  |  Share Your Stuff Tuesdays : Table for Seven  |  Thriving on Thursdays : Domesblissity  |  Wake Up Wednesday Linky Party : A Peek Into My Paradise  |  Whimsy Wednesdays : The NY Melrose Family  |  Wonderful Wednesday : Ducks 'n a Row

Classroom Valentine's Day Idea

This is what we gave out last year at my son's kindergarten class for Valentine's Day. Everybody thought it was pretty cute. I had so much fun making them too!

If you're wondering if he was standing in front of a red textured wall when I took his picture, then you're wrong. I am far from being computer savvy, but there's this neat little trick I learned from watching YouTube tutorials (several of them actually, I guess I'm a slow learner, LOL). It's called a layer mask, and this is what I used to merge my little boy's photo onto the red digital paper.

All I needed was a camera, a camera ready child :), photo editing software (I used Adobe Photoshop Elements 9), card stock paper (I used pink for the heart and blue for matting), photo paper, heart shaped Dove Chocolates, and glue dots.

Here's how I did it.

First, I cut out a heart shape on pink card stock paper with my Silhouette Cameo. But you can also use scissors if you want.

Then, I took a picture of my little boy holding the paper heart. I chose this white wall as the background so it would be easier for me to edit it.

Next, I opened the file on Adobe Elements 9, resizing the image so that the heart is slightly bigger than the chocolate heart. (For demonstration purposes, I made this one bigger than the actual Valentine cards I made for his class.)

After that, I opened the digital paper that I wanted to use as the background (the digital paper is from the Lovey Mini Kit by Pixel Gypsy). The picture has to be on top of the digital paper as illustrated on this photo above (blue circle). If the digital paper happens to end up on top of the picture, all you have to do is to drag it down and vice versa.

Then, I clicked on the image - please check out the blue circle (or blue oblong, if you want to be technical, LOL) - and then I clicked on the Quick Selection Tool, then New Selection (blue arrows).

What the Selection Tool does is it draws a path around the image that you want to merge into the background. So I clicked on my little boy's image. Sometimes the path doesn't go around the whole image, you just have to drag the path until the whole image is included.

Next, I clicked on the Add Layer Mask Tool (blue arrow). Now you'll see that his picture is merged into the red digital paper.

I wasn't too happy with the selected image because as you can see on the photo above, some of the white wall was showing. So I clicked on the brush tool, making sure that the Foreground Color is on top of the Background Color (blue arrows), if not, just click on Switch Foreground and Background Colors. Then I clicked on the area that needs to be erased. Whenever I erase too much and need to bring it back, I just switch the foreground and background colors then click on the erased area again. Fun, right? :)

Next, I added the text (I used Cheri font for the text) and the slight glowing effect. Aaaannnd I'm done!

Well, the digital part anyways. :)

I printed them out using the photo paper, cut them, then matted them on blue card stock paper and adhered the Dove Chocolates with glue dots.

As I've mentioned at the beginning of this post, we gave these out last year. I haven't decided what we're giving out for Valentine's Day this year. I guess I'm gonna be doing a lot of searching on Pinterest. :)

What about you? Are your kids ready for Valentine's Day?

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I linked this post to these wonderful parties:
All Things Thursday Blog Hop : Posed Perfection  |  Bewitch Me & Titi Link Party : TitiCrafty by Camila  |  DIY Sunday Showcase Link Party : VMG 206  |  Freedom Fridays with All My Bloggy Friends : Love Bakes Good Cakes  |  Friday Flash Blog : The Jenny Evolution  |  Friday Link Party : The Pin Junkie  |  Frugal Crafty Home Blog Hop : Carrie This Home  |  Give Me the Goods Link Party : Rain on a Tin Roof  |  Happiness is Homemade Link Party : A Peek Into My Paradise  |  Inspire Me Monday : Create With Joy  |  Ladies Only Blog Share : Mommifried  |  Link Party Tuesday : A to Zebra Celebrations  |  Mega Inspiration Monday : I Should Be Mopping the Floor  |  My Favorite Things Saturday : A Time For Seasons  |  Share Your Stuff Tuesdays : Table for Seven  |  Shine A Spotlight Saturday : Angels Homestead  |  The Party Bunch : Thirty Handmade Days  |  Thriving on Thursdays : Domesblissity  |  Valentine Link Party : Hoopla Palooza  |  Wake Up Wednesday Linky Party : A Peek Into My Paradise  |  Whimsy Wednesdays : The NY Melrose Family  |  Wonderful Wednesday : Ducks 'n a Row

Daddy Herschel's 61st Birthday

My stepfather turned 61 years old last weekend. We decided to make him a surprise birthday celebration in advance. The little boy had a sleep over with his woewoe and woewa (lolo and lola is Filipino for grandpa and grandma, but when Nath was younger he couldn't pronounce it right, sounded like woewoe and woewa), so we knew for sure that they were coming that day to bring him home.

This is the birthday card I made him. I used the digital scrapbooking kit from Kristal Kreations. You can click here to check out her site. This is the same kit I used to make my Father's Day Freebie.

Claire made a drawing of him, but unfortunately I didn't get to take a picture of it. Yes, me, the family paparazzi, forgot to take a picture of something. Still kicking myself about that, by the way.

My sixteen-year-old daughter Bea made this chocolate cake from scratch. 

You want to know how I made the number 61 on the cake? First, I printed out the number, making sure it's the right size for the cake. Then I stapled a piece of wax paper on top of it. And then I melted some white chocolate, spooned it into a ziploc bag, snipped off a corner and piped it onto the wax paper. I tried my best  to follow the shape of the number 61, then topped it off with sprinkles. When I was satisfied with it, I put it into the freezer for a few minutes until the white chocolate is set.

The thing is, I went a little crazy with the birthday candles. And you know how when you have a lot of candles to light, it kind of takes you forever to finish lighting them all? Yeah, that's when the white chocolate started to melt. Yep, our number 61 turned all weird and melty. Oh well, at least we had a good laugh about it. Makes it more memorable, don't you think?