A Valentine Journey

I just wanted to capture this little creative arc I went on with my 2nd grade daughter over the weekend!

Inspiration

My daughter found a little card with a flap in the woods last week and wanted to base her valentines cards off that design. I asked her to make a prototype based off this object because I never got to see it, and this is what she made:

A paper prototype of a valentine with a little flap exposing a “Happy Valentine’s Day” message below.

Prototyping

We talked about how maybe it should be heart shaped, and I proposed this heart shape with each side being its own flap or door.

A paper prototype an outer heart frame with an inner heart shape cut out such that it can open like two little doors. A version of the same heart frame and doors but made with two shades of red card stock. The same two-toned paper heart, but with the doors open revealing the inside message.

At this point, this seemed like a cute and workable design, and the next question was how to make a lot of them without too much effort. It needed to be something my daughter could do herself, but that a grownup could also get involved with to speed things up.

Designing on the computer

My daughter is starting to use more computer programs to create things. She is able to autonomously use google docs to type letters to fairies and print them out. Last weekend, she used a spreadsheet for the first time. This was the weekend of introducing google slides for graphic design purposes.

I made 4 letter-paper-sized slides and set up some double-sided templates for the insides and outsides of these valentine cards. The fronts and backs aren’t perfectly aligned, but after an iteration, we found a way to only print the outlines on the sides we really needed them on and minimize template lines in the final design.

Designing the template in google slides Template printed and partly cut out of white printer paper Assembled white paper example Template printed on two shades of red cardstock

User feedback

Once we had our first “final” versions of these valentines, we showed them off to my husband, who complained that they just looked like two-colored hearts and it wasn’t clear that you were supposed to open them and read a message inside. We experimented with a couple options for different affordances, from a sticker, to a hole-punched peep hole, to cutting the edges of the windows (more labor intensive). In the end, we changed to template to have written instructions (kind of Alice in Wonderland style), and cut the center opening of the inner heart in a way that let the inner layer show through a bit more.

Heart sticker and “open me” hand-written in pencil Hole-punched peep hole Cut border around heart window flaps Explicit instructions with “open me” printed directly on the paper

Creating with kids

The shape of my creative life isn’t* the same as it was before parenthood. So when I can spend a whole day riding a creative wave with my kid as my collaborator (because it caught both our interests, there were aspects at everyones’ skill level, and we were in the flow together) it’s a pretty great feeling.

(*literally got interrupted right here, came back to finish this sentence two days later)

Happy Valentine’s Day peeking through a little heart!