Creative Adventures Valentine Card making Kit

Anyone who has made a Valentine will tell you that it’s a silly thing to do. Cards with frilly lace, red and pink hearts and nonsensical sayings are just so…frivolous.
 
How true! Making Valentines is nothing more than a charming waste of time...or is it?

Here are some facts reported by recent studies in the social sciences:

• Loneliness is contagious - when people talk about being lonely, their friends tend to begin feeling the same way
• Happiness is also contagious- it spreads like ripples in a pond, affecting more than just the people you know
• Engaging in hands-on creative activities reduces stress, releases frustration, and increases contentment

Add to that the fact that greeting cards help people connect to each other by sharing humor, inspiration, comfort, thoughts and emotions, and the conclusion is clear: making Valentines is not only good for your health, it's good for society!

So do your civic duty. Gather around the dining room table, grab a glue stick, and start putting some cards together.  
 
Introducing…
Creative Adventures™ Valentine Kit
with everything you need for
hours of old-fashioned card making fun:
colorful card stock, envelopes, lacy doilies, lots and lots of hearts in intricate patterns, fun embellishments, and
a glue stick to put it all together.
 
And while you’re busy gluing, cutting, layering, and laughing, let us share with you a few Valentine’s Day facts and legends that we've compiled:
 

V is for Vinegar. Vinegar Valentines are greeting cards containing insults or even obscenities. At one time in the 1800's, the Chicago Post Office rejected some 25,000 cards on the grounds that they were "not fit" be carried through the United States Mail.
 

A is for Americans.We exchange more cards on Valentine's Day than at any other time of year, except for the Christmas holidays.
 
L is for Lace.  Lace has been associated with romance since the days of knighthood when a knight rode into battle with a ribbon or scarf given him by his lady fair. The word "lace" comes from a Latin word meaning a “noose” or to "snare".
 
E is for Esther Howland who, as a student at Mount Holyoke College, crafted the first commercial American Valentines, using lace, fine papers, and other supplies imported from England by her father, who was a stationer.

N is for Nonsense rhyme, which every good Valentine should have, preferably a pun or a rebus, where a picture substitutes for a word, as in “Valentine, I’m not lion, please bee mine.”

T is for Tradition. Valentine’s Day has been with us since the Middle Ages, and our card exchanging tradition since the 1800’s.

I is for ‘I can hardly believe it!” About one billion valentines are sent each year worldwide.

N is for Nineteenth-century Great Britain, when Valentines as we know them today first came into fashion.

E is for Entrepreneur. Eventually Esther Howland, also a printer and artist, employed several assistants and her brothers to manufacture and market her "Worcester" Valentines, She was one of the first successful U.S. career women; her sales amounted to about a hundred thousand dollars annually--not bad for the 1830's.

S is for Sailors. These men of the seas were more romantic than you might think.  They carved hearts and other loving designs on rounded long sticks fashioned from ivory or wood. The stick was worn by the sailor's sweetheart as a stay, or "busk", inside her corset; thus it came to be known as a "Busk Valentine". Ouch!