Printable Scratch-Off Kids' Valentine

I made this printable valentine for Ginger to use at school this week. It's like a Lotto-Ticket meets a Magic 8 Ball. You can print these out and paint over the hearts with homemade scratch-off liquid. At first Ginger thought these were weird ("Lucky in Love? Gross!), but we took the gross factor down a notch with silly scratch-off responses ("Ask again in 10 years").

You can find the recipe for Family Fun Magazine's scratch-off liquid here. It's just 2 parts acrylic paint and 1 part liquid dish soap. We haven't tried this part yet, so fingers crossed that it works!

Lucky in Love Valentine





You should be able to view full-screen or download the pdf above.

**I recommend printing on heavy paper!

Update: I sent this pdf to Kinko's and had them print it on glossy cardstock. Then I painted two coats of the scratch-off liquid directly onto the paper (instead of messing with clear contact paper like FF recommends). In the end, it worked...but the scratching off part was a little harder than it should be. Still manageable, especially on a hard surface and with a quarter, but a little rough on fingernails. All told, I think it was quicker (2 coats instead of the recommended 3) and easier than following Family Fun exactly. But the only thing that saved this project (on the night before Valentines when the holiday section of Target looked like it had been sacked and looted) was the GLOSSY paper. I don't think it would have worked on regular paper or on regular cardstock.

Ginger's Nightstand

I scoured craigslist for a nightstand for Ginger's room. It had to be as tall as her desk (placed on the other side of her bed) so that the lamps on top of each would be symmetrical, without taking up much floor space in her rapidly crowding room. I never found what I was looking for, but I did find this "telephone table."

It was much too short for my plans, but I lucked out with these furniture feet from Lowes.

The table legs already had a hole for me to screw into, it just wasn't quite deep enough. I deepened the hole with the drill and screwed the feet in. So easy! I love it when my plans work out.

Here's the table after construction.

Then I wiped it with liquid deglosser and sprayed it with about ten coats of paint and clear coat. There really is a trick to spray painting, I think. If you paint too quickly, you get millions of tiny spots of paint which ends up looking matte, which is great if that's what you want, but I wanted it GLOSSY. If you paint too slowly, you get drips and pools. But at just the right speed there's enough wet paint in one place that it oozes together to make a uniform layer, and I think that's when the evenest, shiniest finish happens.

Lastly, I glued a seashell we brought back from the coast onto the drawer pull. It suits her.

The World's Largest Clothespin

Big things are fun! Including these giant clothespins I found at Jo-anns (half off, woo-hoo!). What were they intended for? Paperweights? Gag gifts? I don't know. But I found the perfect use for them in my would-be artist daughter's room. I hope now to never again find her paintings Scotch taped to the walls.

I just predrilled a hole in the back, marking carefully so all the holes would be in the same place, lovely uniformity. Then slid a screw through a washer (screw head slightly too small) and screwed the clothes pins to the wall. I only happened to hit a stud once, so for most of them I screwed into a drywall screw pre-installed.

"Ginger. You. Are. My. Sunshine(Picture of sun shining)". Later realized, could also be read: "Ginger, you are my sun." Which sounds a lot more confusing than it looks.

Watch Where You Park That Thing

Note to self: The next time you set up a painting operation on your husband's side of the garage, you should probably mention it to him. Particularly when it's low to the ground. It's no big deal, just get the word out. Otherwise he might run his car over the thing your trying to paint.

Twice.

Good thing that Play-Doh was there to cushion the blow!

Fortunately, since this bedframe is made out of something akin to tin-foil, it was easy to bend it back into shape. Both times. (Sorry, hon!)

I also painted over the gorgeous dark wood on Ginger's mirror, to help it blend in with the theme of her room. I was a little sad to do it, but I like it now that the room is coming together.

On both projects I first wiped the surface down with liquid deglosser. Or you could use liquid sandpaper. I think its the same thing. It helps the new paint bind to the old finish so you can skip the sanding/stripping and just get to the fun part! I didn't know if it would have any effect on the metal headboard, but I did it anyway. If nothing else it cleaned it up a bit, but I haven't had any problems with the paint coming off of that (I have tried to be gentle and not run any cars over it since its been painted).

Reversible Pillows - Why Not?

If you've already spent three dog years making a reversible quilt (which if you do the math is one quilt for the price of two), you might as well keep going and make reversible pillows as well. I swear it will be a lot more fun.

First I started with the euro sham pillow covers for Ginger's bed in her all-new totally redesigned room. 2.0! I've never made mitered corners on a pillow before. I figured a fabric mitered corner would be way easier than a wood trim mitered corner. Hey, maybe there would be some ease? Or if all else failed I'd just iron out my mistakes? I tried to take advantage of both those cheats, but then realized that with fabric you also have to put the pieces together blindly. While they're inside out.

I was also working from a pattern for a 16" square pillow and trying to make it into a 20" square. I was never 100% sure of the algebra. Plus I enlarged the mitered border from 2 inches to 3. It was pretty tricky. So imagine my surprise, when the fidgety, amorphous blob I had been fighting with suddenly righted itself and became a pillow sham! Phew.

So THEN, I treated myself with a completely pattern-free, stream of conciousness kind of pillow that I had been dreaming of during Exhibit A{21st century forms of torture} up there. Using all the gorgeous fabrics I had left over from the quilt, and my favorite shape the rectangle, I made this pillow. It's strait-laced and sort of preppy on one side, and a rainbowed volume meter on the other. All wrapped up with jewelry-style beaded trim. My favorite part of her room so far.

And now, when Ginger makes her bed in the morning, she has some pretty fancy choices to make.

Finished!

Ginger's quilt is finally done! My first and only (probably) quilt! Huu raa! And what's the first thing she wanted to do with it? Get snuggled! I love that girl. Initially the idea was to finish all of the individual pieces for her room in secret and then surprise the heck out of her with a giant reveal at the end. But come on, how can you work on a quilt for three months without having piles of work-in-progress laying around? I couldn't. So she's seen every inch of this thing progressing, and I think it's been exciting for her. "Look how big my quilt is now!"-kind of a thing. She was right there with me, cheering, as I hand-stitched the last few inches of binding. I don't think she could believe that it was actually, finally, all the way done.

There's one mistake, erm, what I mean to say is, of the many mistakes I made on this quilt, there's one pretty obvious one. If you enjoy Where's Waldo sorts of things, you might like trying to find the broken line where I accidentaly put Fabric A instead of B.

Halfway There

Ginger's quilt (back) is halfway done. This is the "guest" or "grown-up" side that we can flip to when we have visitors staying in her room or when she acquires a taste for things less girly. She's not crazy about it. I love it, though. I wish it were destined for a little more playing time. The pattern is "Twisted" by Carolina Patchworks and the green fabric is Robert Kaufman Leaf from Night and Day 3.