Photo flickbook

You could spend an hour making a handmade card, but with just a little bit more effort you can send your Valentine's Day message via the wonderful medium of the flickbook.

What you need

Digital camera
Tripod
A nice friend
Paper and printer
Bulldog clip

What to do

There are two ways to make a photo flickbook: if you have advanced video editing software, such as QuickTime Pro, all you need to do is take a short video on your digital camera and convert it into lots of images. If you don't have such fancy-pants software, then read on …

1. Before you start taking pictures, decide what your flickbook is going to be about. You could pick up a large piece of paper which says "I love you", blow a kiss, or do a little dance - anything goes as long as it's relatively short and simple. The flickbook is not the place to make a dramatic motion picture.

2. Stand in position. Get your friend to position the camera so that as much of you as needed is in the frame. Ideally, they should use a tripod, as this is the only way to guarantee every single photo will be shot from the same place. But if your tripod resources are depleted, a steady hand should suffice.

3. Act out your short scene very, very slowly while your friend takes as many pictures as possible. The best flick-books have at least 50 different pictures.

4. Using whatever picture editing/layout software you have on your computer, import all of your flickbook photos, in sequence, into picture boxes that are all exactly the same size (I suggest 8cm wide by 5cm high). So you don't waste paper, try to fit as many photos on one page as possible.

5. Print your pages and cut out the photos, keeping them in sequence at all times. Then put them all in a pile and bind on the left hand side with a large bulldog clip.