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Vince's Vintage Valentines

Just in case you don't get any candy for Valentine's Day, here is enough to last you awhile. Will you be mine?

It's not "Crafty Thursday" anymore, but I was sick with strep throat all yesterday and missed out on most of the day. I'm recovering! So, here's my post:I'll admit that I didn't have anything particular planned to feature for Valentine's Day (over a month away, too), but when the team leader of NaturalKids announced a "Valentine's Day challenge" it occured to me that I could make little

a late valentines related image!

I love my clients. I love my readers. I love art.

I must be crazy with all this love, because I decided to create and post some downloadable Valentine’s Day art so the love can be shared. Here’s what I’m practically giving away:

FREE greeting card templates

Yep, totally free and ready for you to create your card. I’ve included an Adobe Illustrator file, an EPS file, and even a Microsoft Word document. Whether or not you have super special graphics software, you should be able to print your own Valentines on plain ol’ 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper. It’s an easy ZIP file download, right here.

Valentine Art Collection - limited time only!

I can’t believe I’m doing this, but love is a blinding force. I created a collection of four original pieces of Valentine-themed art. A collection like this is worth hundreds, but I am just about giving it away for… $1.50. I told you I was crazy. Pocket change gets you the entire collection of high-res image files that you can plug into just about any graphics software or even a word processing app. Make your own cards or shirts, post it on your blog, use it for a Valentine-themed Twitter background.

This is for a limited time only. After that very special day of love (February 14), I’m taking the art down and it will be used in the gift industry. Then you’ll have to go to store and buy it like the rest of us mortals (details on the limited-use license are on the site).

Be happy, be free, be creative, and please take advantage of this amazing art sale!

I’ve set things up so it’s super easy to get everything on my site. There’s even a handy little PayPal button for your convenience. Of course, the greeting card templates are free and you can find them in the same place.

Happy Valentine’s Day! As always, I love to hear from you about how you used the art. In fact, let’s have a little contest, shall we?

The best use of the downloaded art gets their money back. Just e-mail me with what you did and I’ll open my heart for judging.

Trying to achieve acrylic feel with ArtRage.

**tilen-artplanet.blogspot.com**

Tool: photoshop CS


**Tilen's shop ~tilen.dawanda.com~ **

Another painting on Addy & Alysa series.
Painted in Photoshop CS, used pastel color theme, will add this peace on my shop at tilen.dawanda.com

A series of artline & marker, simple lines & contrast colors.
More over here: http://tilenti.deviantart.com/


**Tilen's shop**
~tilen.etsy.com~
~tilen.dawanda.com~

"Use the content-rubric to rate the students' writing from 0 to 2: zero if their response lacks an introductory thematic sentence and closing statement, 1 if they show evidence of either."

As I tried following these instructions during an after-school staff meeting, I found it impossible to determine whether my first grader A___'s writing in Spanish lacked theme and closure, or contained both, for that matter. But my confusion wasn't due to what she'd done or her lack of trying.

In her five months of struggling in room 103, A__ had regularly filled a half-sheet of paper with letters she carefully scribed while sounding out each syllable. And although her lettering was wonderful, in fact her compositions were unreadable, oftentimes even to their author. That hadn't stopped her.

Problem was, A__'s written words lacked most of the vowels, some consonants, and each of her lines normally contained only one space separating two long clusters of indecipherable prose. At the same time, such work showed improvement since she'd entered first grade almost unable to read.

"Zero if the response lacks an introductory--" I repeated to myself. How could I know if it did? She might have a strong thematic sentence and an even better closure, but I was expected to give her a zero simply because I couldn't decipher her heroic compositions. I was tempted to leave an N/A, which translated as "not observed," but then I would have had to explain my veering from the grading system.

During those five months A__ had managed to reach a 6 reading level, which put her on the path of failing to reach grade level by the end of the school year. I had worried about her in other ways, wondering if her belabored development was a sign of ADHD, dyslexia, or an even more serious learning disorder.

Teachers worry about such things, sometimes more than they should. For various reasons, every year we have kids who can't, won't or don't make it. We don't reach them. It's not just in writing; it's in every subject and can even encompass their growth as little human beings.

Anyway, A__'s prospect of going on to second grade with skills, abilities, and knowledge she'd need to survive, much less prosper, didn't seem likely. I would need to "staff" her, which would mean a meeting with a team of professionals to determine how best to meet her needs, since her teacher hadn't been able to do it.

I didn't mind the implicit idea of failure in this, since I know I'm no master teacher. It was the implicit branding of A__ that I dreaded. She and her parents would suffer the too common stress and even humiliation of a student diagnosed as failing.

Given her and my situation, I'd begun having her sit regularly with others at my table, instead of writing independently.

One morning she asked, "Cómo se escribe Hawaii?" I wrote it on a note for her, even though spelling U.S. states wasn't how I had intended to help her. When she showed me her completed sheet, I was surprised she hadn't done the usual half-page. There were only five lines. Less than thirty words. But each one was spaced. Almost no letters were missing. And I could read them. A__ had made a qualitative leap! We celebrated her achievement that day with song, dance and chants.

But A__ wasn't done.

A couple of days later she wrote seven lines. While the spelling and spacing was about the same, she had added something new. Sentences. With capitals and periods. Even the lone sentence that wasn't grammatically perfect was close to.

A__ who was at level 6 in reading had made a syntactic leap that those at level 16 had only begun to tackle, in some cases not as successfully. We celebrated again, only harder. A__ had become not just the class model for persistence, but also our model for something higher--writing excellence.

The composing of a few five-word sentences may not sound like major achievement, but in this case it was sufficient to affect a heart that often gets hardened by the job of teaching in U.S. classrooms. I felt good.

But she wasn't done.

For our Valentine's party, we worked like Santa and his elves do on the 24th, in our case, getting the kids' cards for their parents ready. I'd sent blank cards home for parents to make one for their kid, and my plan was to have each parent and child share theirs in front of the class.

As they took turns reading aloud, I realized I didn't know what the kids had written, even though I'd helped them with revisions. I'd been too much editor and not enough listener. Some of the more advanced ones had created some great, even beautifully poetic pieces, which I wish I could share, but can't since you're not a part of room 103.

When A__ finished reading to her father, I realized again that I hadn't heard what she'd read. All I'd heard was her loud, proud voice smoothly and unhesitatingly enunciate every word, from beginning to end. To me, the content, though intelligible, wasn't the most important thing.

When I looked at the faces of the parents who didn't know of A__'s past, I so much wanted them to know what she had struggled through, what her achievement amounted to.

I began explaining the significance of the words that she had very fluidly read to them, how wonderful it was that she could even read her own words, and how proud they should feel for her. I was only able to mutter out half of this as I made my way to where we'd posted a display of A__'s recent gains. I did manage to point to it. That's the most I'm capable of while crying.

One by one the parents approached to examine her work, nodding and talking amongst themselves. I couldn't make out what they said because I was all choked up with my own heartfelt pride in her.

Unintentionally, A__ had accomplished one more thing. I'd challenged the class to write something so excellent it would make their parents cry, promising a prize to whoever succeeded. But all the parents had succeeded in holding their emotions back. Only the teacher had succumbed. By default, A__ had won the prize.

I lay claim to A__'s reading as my best Valentine, which makes it worth a lot higher than a 2 on a content rubric. Teacher's prerogative. That's all I wanted to share.

But then again, A__ may not be done yet.

© Rudy Ch. Garcia 2008

My first son was born on Valentines Day and so this day is one of a kind and very special for me. He has his own home now so I called him to wish him a happy birthday much earlier than I normally would. I knew he was not awake and had every intention of leaving him a voicemail. I was quite silly in my message and I told him that prior to his birth he had kept me up all night and what time he was born, very early in the morning, so I thought I would call and wake him up to tell him how much I love him and I wasn't about to wait a minute longer. He said he really enjoyed my message and said he didn't know what time he was born at that time in the morning. In his baby album we even have a photo of the clock at that exact time. Funny, I guess I never told him. I think I will get the kids baby books out and share some other facts with them that they don't know surrounded the time of their births.

onight I walked home from the 24th and Mission BART stop. It was Valentine’s day, and the neighborhood celebrated by being outside.

Stores stayed open late. Perfumed Latino guys pushed and egged each other on, nervously buying flowers for sweethearts and would-be sweethearts. The bodas civiles joints lubricated their trade with sidewalk tables of cheap teddy bears wrapped in red cellophane.

I walked home in my pink dress. Women holding little girls walked by, clutching roses, boxes of chocolates. Women completed errands, hauled children, and bought food with the same grim determination, red cellophane emerging from their purses.

I saw a beautifully happy couple. Their little daughter ran up the sidewalk in front of them. I caught the man’s eye as I passed and saw satisfaction on his face.

More people were on the street than usual. More police were around. I saw two huge officers, giants. One had his hand on the back of a tiny fast-talking man. There was no sense of potential violence, just a solid hand on the back and a posture that clearly communicated that whatever jig there may have been was now thoroughly up.

There was music and the smell of onions cooking. The jazz club was setting up a show. As I walked home, buses drove back and forth full of people like me, heading home, and out, and home again.

Here is a good Valentines day card to give to someone you just met.

Jamietucker.com

Hi everybuddy. Today is my first day posting after many days (over a year) of lurking - what a wonderful and inspiring group this is!

I'm a freelance illustrator living in Seattle, Wa. Most of my work revolves around my pursuit of entering the children's book market.

I have a website: johnsgalaxy.net and a blog: johndeininger.blogspot.com

Happy Valentine's Day :)

Since today is Valentine’s Day, I can’t think of a better time to share some work I did this past year for this most-holy day set aside to boost restaurant, flower, chocolate and greeting card sells. Heh. Yesterday I posted a Valentine Bear card, today it’s a Valentine Kitty!

Below: The finished card, front and inside copy.

Below: The first seed of the idea in a quick, thumbnail sketch. When I’m in the concepting stage of a project like this, I’ll do a slew of thumbnail sketches, which I try to do quickly, keeping them simple. If one gets chosen to turn into a card, then I’ll spend more time on flushing out the initial idea.

Below: And since the above thumb was selected to be turned into a card, I then played around with the layout, text, and colors. The sketch on the bottom-right was chosen to go to final by the client, with some slight changes (they didn’t want any lines showing hair on the cat).

Happy Valentine's Day! It brings me great JOY to make my first post here at SFG. My name is Michael and I'm from the button-down, political Washington DC area but my artwork is unapologetically bold, colorful, and fun. You can browse through my blog or look through my website at: Arty4ever.com

-me!

Happy Valentine's Day

Over at Illustration for Kids, we just did a valentine's day mailer. This is my piece:
Here is our mailer (front):
And here is the back:
and I got a sweet little CHICKEN valentine from Gis. Thank you, Birdie! The chicken is so cute, I had to show it:
Happy Valentine's Day!

For someone who's not all that big on Valentine's Day, I seem to have quite a few of these images floating around my brain.
Happy Valentine's Day, again!
Sketched Out

Ed Emberley Valentine Cards