You’re never too old to send Valentines, right? Wait, I should clarify: the ones with Disney characters or generic messages should definitely be banned for the over eight-year-old set. So what about the rest of us who want to share some love this Valentine’s Day, but without the cheesy sentiments of those chalky candy hearts and impersonal pre-printed cards?

Thankfully the talented folks at Tabblo, a story-style photo sharing site, have come up with a great solution for the modern Valentine — create your own using your fabulous photos and their fabulous templates and send them to your friends and family. Read on to find out all about it…

OK, first of all — what’s a tabblo, you ask? I’ve been seeing them popping up all over people’s personal blogs and have been dying to find the time to really figure out what they’re all about. Basically, a tabblo is simply a web page where you can use photos and words together. Once you’ve created your masterpiece (for free!), you can publish it to your personal blog, upload it to photosharing sites like Flickr or simply email your friends a link to head over to Tabblo to check it out for themselves.

Want to take it a step further than just online enjoyment? Make posters, postcards, prints or photo books using your cool layouts (for a small fee). For someone who can spend hours in Photoshop creating storyboards out of my digital photos, this is a dream!

Another reason I love this service? They are fully intergrated with Flickr (and Apple’s iPhoto and Google’s Picasa, among others), which means I can avoid having to upload all my photos again. This is a huge draw. I’ve made a couple of photo books in the past on Shutterfly as gifts, and they are awesome. But I have to admit, the one reason I haven’t made them for every occasion is that I have to re-upload all my photos to another site. What a pain!

So…back to the V-Day treat going on right now at Tabblo. The fine folks at Tabblo are giving you a way to create a personalized photo Valentine online and send it to whomever you want using only an email address (you can even tailor the pictures and message for each recipient). Your friends and family get an email asking them to accept the card and enter their mailing address, and Tabblo will deliver the recipient a real card in the mail. You get the benefit of sending a real card–personalized with your own photos and message–without the hassle of collecting addresses and sending them out on your own. Can I get an AMEN from all those busy parents?

Although, if you’re one of those organized people who happens to have your friends’ mailing addresses and want to enter them in without the email step, you can do it that way, too. I just know, in this digital age, my email address book is much more complete than my actual address book.

The cool part? Each Valentine costs just $1 (including shipping and handling). At that price maybe even the under eight-year-old set can give up the Disney-themed cards for something more creative, too!

Click on my Tabblo below to start exploring the site and making creative photo pages for yourself!

… See my Tabblo