7 Days of Valentine's: The Box

I've always loved Valentine's Boxes. I remember spending hours making sure mine were perfect, They never really came out how my kid brain envisioned them, but I loved them. As an adult I get to help my kids visions become reality. (Confession time: I like them so much I've even made extra "test" boxes.)

You can see from last year's that we employ a variety of techniques. We start by scouring Internet photos for inspiration based a predetermined idea. I really liked how the owl turned out last year, and an oatmeal container really makes a perfect Valentine's Box. Since we eat lots of oatmeal, it was easy to save a few for this project.

My youngest loves her pink sock monkey hat that she got for her birthday, so that was our inspiration for her box. We found lots of images all over the Internet, and settled on a pretty simple design using white and pink paper with just a smidgen of red and black. I used the canister lid to create a proportional oval shape for mouth. See how I traced less than half, moved it and traced the other side? Going all the way around would have given me a circle.

The ears are just circle's folded and glued. This design was so simple that the hardest part was cutting little red X's for the center of the eyes.

I added a small stitching detail with a pink colored pencil.

After seeing the Monkey, my oldest was determined to have a bunny. (Even though a note a from the teacher indicated boxes weren't necessary.) So back to the Internet for inspiration. Once again we went with simple shapes. Circles, ovals and hearts can make for a simple yet cute design.

 

After drawing out and cutting the shapes in white, pink and black. We used red liquid chalk to "burnish" the edges and add dimension around all of the white shapes.

 



Assembling only consisted of gluing the various shapes to the canister.

A pen was used to add freckles with the whiskers.

 

 

Here is another peak at the finished products.