It's that time of year again! There's no doubt that kids enjoy Valentine's Day as much as grown-ups, and you can make the holiday even more special by helping them to create their own cards and decorate them.

Below are three sets of Valentine's Day cards that can't be found in stores. Two of the pages are full color, so they can be printed and used as-is, or they can be decorated. One of the sheets is black and white, which will allow your kids to color and embellish the cards, and add their own personal touches. Each of the three sheets contains six unique designs, for a total of 18 different cards.

What you need

• A printer
• Card stock or heavy paper (Try colored, textured or patterned stock to make the cards even more special. You can find links to card stock on Amazon below.)
• Scissors or a paper cutter
• Crayons, markers, paint, glitter glue, rhinestones or anything else that will embellish cards
• One or more of these documents:

- Cartoon cards (full color)

- Whimsical cards (full color)

- Coloring cards (black and white)

NOTE: You might see gray lines in the card documents. These won't print, so just ignore them.

Steps

1. Choose the set(s) of cards you want to download and save it/them to your computer.
2. Print the cards on 8-1/2" x 11" paper or card stock.
3. Fold the paper or card stock in half, horizontally. The resulting size will be 4-1/4" x 11".
4. Use a ruler to measure 3-5/8" from the left side of the back of the folded paper. With a pencil, make two light marks on that spot, one on each edge of the paper. Do the same from the right side. This will tell you where to fold the paper so it will form six sections. (You might want to align the ruler with the dots and make pencil lines before you fold.) Once you have the paper folded, cut out the cards with scissors or a paper cutter.
5. Now your kids can let their imaginations run wild as they decorate each card to make a unique creation.

Tips

• You can use regular paper, but that will make flimsier cards.
• If you don't have a color printer, you can print the colored cards in black and white. If your kids use markers, glitter glue or anything else they can find to decorate them, no one will know the cards were supposed to be printed in color!
• Use pinking shears or other scissors that cut patterns to make the edges of the cards more interesting.
• The cards can be mounted on colored card stock that's slightly larger to give them a border effect. This would be especially effective when using scissors that cut in a pattern.