Baby Talk: Valentine Art Forgery

Ever seen a kid`s Science Fair project that is so perfect and complicated that you knew there was parental involvement, beyond the basic help and support? Or are you that mom who does the cutting for the kid's art collage homework made from magazine clippings because the corners have to be perfect and exactly straight? I swear I will never be that mom because I believe in honest effort and hard work. I don't want to do anything that would set me on the wrong path, ever. Anyway in my case my son colours better than me. That being said, I have a Valentines Day confession to make that I will own up to right now...

Crafty Mom Confesses

I forged my son's art work and made digital copies for mass production!

Toucan of My Love, AJ's Originals 6 of 7

First off, I am an experienced scrapbooker and cardmaker. I have friends who are reps for the big companies like Stampin Up, Creative Memories, Close to My Heart etc so I've been to everyone's card making party and have amassed a large collection of inks, paper, and stamps for all occasions over the years. However, finally this year is the first time I've been able to sit down and make 52 Valentine cards for my kids' classes. My strategy was to start early and enlist the two budding artists to do their own work.

"A Toucan of My Love" is a retired Valentine set from Stampin Up that I purchased on ebay two years ago. The card I have designed is very simple as I've simply cut a sheet of 8.5 x 10 into 5 similar size pieces to fold in half. The art on the cover is a stamped image of the Kangaroo: "Hoppy Valentines Day", the Toucan: "A Toucan of My Love" and the Fish with kissy lips "You're Fintastic".

I made it the best after school activity this week for four days in a row. Today Friday was the only day we didn't do cards because of the skating lessons. I stamped the pictures onto pieces of white cardstock about 3.5 x 2.5 inches. Instead of stamping 52 times, I ended up using my scanner and printer to produce a sheet of 10 pictures at a time.

Umounted images coloured by Momma

AJ spent a lot of time doing detailed work in the colouring. Therefore in the time it took Maggie to churn out all 26 pictures in full colour, AJ managed to colour only 7. He was so focused and so creative. However I was concerned with the pace and I decided to "help" colour so I used the same crayons and coloured the same images in the same colour he had used. I asked him if that was ok to help him colour and he said yes, but he reminded ME to stay in the lines and do good work. wow! I copied the same colour scheme he chose for each card, none alike. Really, I was just hoping to make these look like AJ coloured them. Great, my colouring is only as good as a four year olds. After three pictures I stopped. Is this right?

What am I teaching my son, that I will do his homework for him? Or am I really just helping him out, after all it's only colouring...

But he needs 26 pictures coloured! But instead of halting the forgery of his coloring, I took it a step further and ended up pasting all the coloured images together, mine and his, to create a full colour sheet to be copied, scanned, printed and cut!

Inspection

The funny thing is, I cut these into the right shapes so they could assemble the cards after school yesterday. I guess AJ suspected something was possibly amiss because he examined the new pieces with a face like "Did I colour this one?" to authenticate his own work. Sigh. Not only did I forge his colouring schemes, but I made prints!

Maggie's work may be "high quantity" but she did put alot of heart into her art. She signed her name with x's and o's and little hearts.

Cards for Teacher, by Maggie

Maggie's work - High Quantity

Anyway AJ still has to cut out 26 images and write his name 26 times. He was already writing his classmates names. There are 8 more pictures left to colour but he is not too interested anymore. What will I do, leave them blank?

Monsters to the Rescue
As it turns out, AJ has been drawing monsters at Sunday School class. I saved this one today. He's been drawing alot of one eyed creatures recently. Now all I need is a good Monster Valentine meme.