In the U.S. there is a long tradition of exchanging gifts and flowers on Valentine‘s Day, but the Valentine Card didn’t really catch on until the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Around 1850, Esther Howland began to produce elaborate, romantic Valentine Cards incorporating paper lace and embossed floral die cuts into her designs.

Although commercial cards were already available in the U.S., Howland’s colorful cards managed capture the beauty and romance that epitomized the Victorian era. Her cards were quickly embraced by the public and soon she found she could hardly keep up with the demand.

Valentine cards continue to outsell cards for every other holiday except Christmas and children especially love to give and receive Valentine cards and candy.

If your child wants to play an active part in selecting and preparing their valentines, there are a wide variety of free, printable cards available online. These cards come in handy regardless if you need a few quick cards for some drop in friends or enough cards for an entire classroom.

Below you will find websites that offer a wide selection of free, printable cards that will appeal to all tastes and ages. Some of the sites such as HP and Canon offer a little extra, but you'll need to search the site to find them. HP has coloring pages, book marks and even valentine boxes. Canon also has an assortment of crafts and a nice selection of printable, decorative envelopes.

While cards are still the most popular way to say Happy Valentine's Day, you may want to consider sending an ecard, too. See my article Free Valentine E-Cards for a list of free ecard services.

Tab browsing is the easiest way to view and open the links below. Simply right click on the link and select "open a new tab.". This will open the web page in a separate tab while keeping this page open. It's a great way to view multiple sites at once.

Nick Jr. offers eight printable cards with their most popular characters including Dora, Blues Clues and Diego. These cards will definitely appeal to younger children.

DLTK's Holiday Activities for Kids has twelve card themes to choose from including Sponge Bob and the Powder Puff Girls. Cards are in gif format, load quickly and can be printed in Color or Black & White.

Kids Turn Central offers three different pages of Valentines. These simple, but colorful cards print 4 to a page.

The HP Creative Studio is one of my favorite sites for holiday cards and crafts. They offer a small selection of printable Valentine Day Cards suitable for both kids and adults.

Cannon Creative Park maintains a wide selection of printable cards.

Makingfriends has colorful cards perfect for a classroom Valentine exchange. They print four cards to the single page with a simple Valentine greeting.

Xerox offers fun and fancy designs that can be printed as folded cards or note cards. The kid's cards print as postcards. All of the cards display in PDF format, but the template allows for customization so you can insert your own text.

Print Free
Scroll through the card assortment using the links directly above the graphics marked cards 01, cards 02 etc.

Free Printable Valentines
Thirty plus fun and colorful cards free for the printing.

Spoonful
Only four cards, but they offer colorful cards with valentine wishes on a template that lets you print all on one pages.

Apples4theTeacher
Another nice selection of cards that print four to a sheet.

Activity Village
Card sets and individual half fold cards with simply artwork and room for your own personal greeting.

Mint Printables
Full size cards with simple greetings.

Lot 26
A small selection of eight cards, but they're really cute, especially the ones shaped like cupcakes.

Nourish Interactive
Scroll down toward the bottom of the page for a selection of printable which include healthy heart valentine cards interspersed between other items. Holiday greeting combined with reminders to stay active and healthy.