Two Quick and Easy DIY Gifts for Valentines Day (Yes, We ARE the Most Romantic People Ever)

Neither of us are big on Valentine’s Day — but we worried that if we didn’t do a Valentine’s post, we would be promptly ejected from the DIY blogosphere. So we sucked it up and created some thoughtful presents for Sam and Brad.

The goal was for each of us to do a project that was fairly easy, quick, and inexpensive. The true recipe for romance. But actually, they both are sweet but not overly sentimental, which just wouldn’t be our style. And we included templates for both projects in case you’re on the hunt for a DIY gift for your valentine… or for anyone else, as these aren’t necessarily romantic depending on how you customize them.

So without further ado, here’s what we created! (And lest you worry that we’re spoiling the presents for our partners almost two weeks before Valentine’s Day, this is the ultimate test of whether they read our blog.)

Sam and I have never actually celebrated Valentine’s Day. Because our first date was on February 15th (he wanted to take me out for Valentine’s Day, I already had plans with my girlfriends), we’ve always just celebrated that instead. One year for our anniversary I made him a calendar with an inside joke phrase on each page. Recently he asked me if I was going to make another one at some point, which pretty much melted my heart because that’s his version of sweet talk. So I thought I would reward him by obliging.

This time I thought I would make him a desk calendar that he could keep at work with him. He has his own office and his desk faces the door, so if he has it on his desk facing him it isn’t something that other people will be poring over (which might be weird since some of the phrases are just strange).

I used Adobe Photoshop Elements — which is a lighter and much cheaper version of Photoshop — to make a sheet for each month. I made each one 5.35×7 inches, which seemed like good proportions for a small desk calendar. The fun part was figuring out what phrases I wanted to use. Then I printed them all on a color printer on 8.5×11″ sheets of card stock and cut them to a uniform size.

The fonts are free ones I found online — “Pea Alexis” for the dates and month, and “Amatic SC” for the phrases.

To display them, I got a little wooden easel that was $5.50 on Amazon when I bought it (affiliate link — read our policies). Of course I couldn’t resist spray painting it turquoise to jazz it up a little.

Here’s the finished result:

Fairly simple, but I think they came out looking nice and are thoughtful and personal. Of course, you might be wondering what on earth all of these mean — I know they’re pretty nonsensical. I can’t explain all of them to you because then what would Sam and I have to bind us together? But I thought maybe you’d enjoy hearing about one of them at least, just to prove that I didn’t just make up random phrases. Let’s go with July, “There’s a dinosaur in my cabana.”

This is a relatively new one, from this past January when Sam and I were on a vacation/work trip to the Virgin Islands. The hotel we were staying at had little canvas cabanas/tents next to the pool overlooking the bay, and we were sitting in one reading one morning (we burn instantaneously if we don’t seek shade). Suddenly Sam yelped and we looked over and there was A GIANT IGUANA in the corner of our cabana. Like, two feet long. This thing really looked like a little dinosaur. And thus a new joke was born. We’re hilarious, I know. That’s the thing about inside jokes, you kinda had to be there….

Anyway, as promised, here is the zipfile for the Personalized DIY Calendar template in case you want to make your own. There’s one file for each month, and each file contains two layers: the dates and month as the background, not editable, and then the phrases, which you can edit if you have Elements or Photoshop (you’ll need to download the Amatic SC font). Presumably you and your partner do not have the exact same inside jokes as Sam and I do….

Brad and I don’t do much for Valentines Day.  Usually I just tell him that I think Valentines Day is stupid, and that we should ignore it.  And then I buy him a bunch of Cadbury Creme Eggs anyway, because I know he’s going to get me something and I don’t want to be the jerk who didn’t remember.

This year, I thought I’d try to be a little less passive-aggressive and make him something nice.  (Don’t worry, I’ll still buy you some Cadbury Creme Eggs, even though that is apparently quite controversial these days.)

I was inspired to do this project when I realized that we don’t have any photos of us up around the house.  And I wasn’t about to go and print a 5-foot version of our faces to put up, either.  But I thought that really small pictures of us would be a cute and handy thing to have as fridge magnets.  Bonus that this is a super easy DIY.

I started by selecting six photos, mostly selfies we’ve taken over the last six (!!) years, and cropped and shrunk them to all be a 1″ x 1″ square.

I use the starter/trial edition of Serif’s DrawPlus, which I find to be plenty powerful and useful for stuff like this.  However, it doesn’t do any photo editing beyond cropping and resizing, so all of the photos were edited in other programs.  In DrawPlus, I positioned these six photos on two 4″ x 6″ sheets so I could eventually print them in a standard photo size.

Next, I had some fun doodling frames around each one.  I considered trying to depict traditional frames, but instead just drew some patterns I liked using colors that we have a lot of around the house.

What I should have done at this point is realized that they were all pretty narrow, and that I could position them all on a single photo rather than two.  Instead, I printed both at our local CVS.  $0.29 wasted.

You’ll have to forgive the quality of the step-by-step shots in this post.  I had about 30 minutes for assembly while Brad was out, so I was rushing.  The good news is that this is a super quick project that can absolutely be done in half an hour!  Especially if you are not trying to capture photographic evidence along the way.

The first thing I did was cut down the photo printouts so they would both fit on one of my adhesive magnetic sheets (affiliate link – read our policies).  The sheets are sized for attaching 4″ x 6″ photos, and I got 4 in a package for $4.40 on Amazon.   You only need one for this project.

Although one side of the magnet is sticky for attaching photos, I supplemented this with a few dabs of strong glue to be sure the hold would last.  I smoothed with a credit card so it would lie nice and flat.

The trickiest part was creating a cover so the photos wouldn’t be damaged by finger-prints over the years.  After consulting with Sage, I decided to give packing tape a try.  For each side, I pulled out a long strip and carefully positioned the bottom edge along the bottom edge of the sheet, being careful that the long edge of the tape would fall between, and not over, the images.  I then ran a credit card along the tape smoothing it onto the photos so no air bubbles formed.

(For a few small bubbles that sneaked through, I found that I could just poke them with my X-ACTO to release the air, and then smooth them out with the edge of the credit card.)

I then cut out each shape with the knife.

They came out very easily – just two light cuts for each side.  Finally, I neatened the cuts and covered the edges with a quick coat of black craft paint to help seal everything in place and make it look finished.

I really love how these came out.  They’re cute and useful, and all have great memories attached to them.  With the tidy black edge and plastic sheen from the packing tape, they actually look like pretty good quality, ifidosaysomyself.

OK, so they’re not very valentines-y.  I’m not either.  But I think we’ll really enjoy having these up year-round.  And they’re just a small gift, so they’re definitely in line with what we’ve done for this holiday in the past.  There will also be chocolate eggs filled with insane amounts of sugar.

And we promised templates!  Here (Easy DIY Photo Magnets Template) is an image of the frames without my photos.   If you size this to be 4″ x 6″ in the program of your choice, you can just size square images (like instagrams!) to be 1″ x 1″ and pop it right in the middle.  Voila.  And if you want to download the free starter/trial edition of Serif’s DrawPlus, you can easily change the colors or alter some of the frames using this file (Easy DIY Photo Magnets Template – For DrawPlus), which from what I can tell work in DrawPlus only.

So, Brad and Sam, what do you think?

Who are we kidding, they’re not reading this.  Brad, at least, would have stopped reading by now so as not to ruin the surprise.

Anyway, we hope that you like these two  ideas for non-sappy, quick, and easy DIY gifts for Valentines Day!  Are you making anything for the holiday?  Ignoring it entirely (jealous…)?

(FEATURED at Craft Gossip! – and sharing at A Bowl Full of Lemons, Live Well Spend Less, I Heart Naptime, Craft-o-maniac, and The Foley Fam)