When it gets close to Valentine’s Day, my children get super excited to create their boxes and they have gotten more and more detailed every year.  I gathered them all together along with some useful information on materials that help make the process a little bit easier.

My daughter Lea is a huge animal lover. If an animal exists, she wants a box version of it and I think her goal every year is to try and challenge me to make them look as realistic as possible.  This is her black cat.

Buttons and wire are always a favorite material to use for eyes and noses.

I have found that it is much easier to cover the boxes with fabric or paper, than painting, because paint takes a long time to dry and doesn’t always cover the box really well.  Here we used foam for the face and feet and covered the rest in black fabric.

Another one of Lea’s animal boxes.  We used PVC pipe for the neck and white fleece for the wings and tail.

The kids do about 95% of the work themselves.  I handle the hot glue and cutting of materials, most of the time we use craft foam and cut it into the shape we need.

Cute little duck butt…..

Naomi’s first one was a lady bug.  After the kids paint, sometimes I will do some detail work with puffy paint.

She has also made a butterfly.  This was made from a window decoration from the Dollar Tree that we just cut and glued to the top.

We wrapped this box with pink duck tape, which is another great material to use instead of paint.

This is a tube of lipstick.  Naomi had an obsession with makeup for a while.  We used Styrofoam cups for the top and some HVAC tape my husband had for the silver part. This could also be made into a bottle of nail polish, by painting the top black and the box red or pink.

This is one of my favorites, an emoji.  Naomi wanted to make an emoji last year and the hardest part was finding something round, that she could paint, and also hold her valentines.

I found a plastic cake container at the Dollar Tree and she painted the inside yellow and glued a pair of sunglasses on the top.

So cool right?!

My oldest son, Shawn, has made a variety of boxes thru the years.  We have done a toolbox, complete with cardboard tools inside, Thor’s hammer, a monster truck, a tank and this battleship.  Not all of his boxes have held up very well, so this is the only picture I have.

This was also put together with black duck tape and some spare materials we had lying around in the garage.

I love Stephen’s Blaze Valentine’s box.  We used foam, paper towel tubes and a lot of glue and paint.  This was when he was in kindergarten, so he painted all the parts and I painted the details after he was in bed 🙂

These are just pieces of craft foam cut in different sizes and glued on the top.  The foam can take quite a few coats of paint to cover well, so we always start our boxes about a week before so everything can dry before gluing.

By the time Stephen made it home, the only thing that had fallen off was a wheel, which I was able to glue back on.

Another one of Lea’s animal boxes.  This was a puppy and we actually used it twice.

There was a lot of carving on this one, but it has held up really well.

Stephen has made a monster.

Complete with glow in the dark eyes and teeth.

Last year Lea made a pink pig and this year we are making a cow with pink spots.

Stephen has requested a submarine…………..more on that later I promise.

Here are a few tips that I have found useful when creating our Valentine boxes:

They have to be able to take the lid off to put their cards in, so I make a point to glue the foam pieces onto the spot that will make that work for them as smoothly as possible.

Fabric and duck tape are perfect alternatives to painting the box.  I have also used craft paper and wrapped the boxes too.

I use a hot glue gun and toothpicks to help hold everything together.

It is easier on everyone to have all the parts painted before construction.  Then go back over and touch up and add details afterwards.

Puffy paint and glitter are perfect additions to any box.

And remember, have fun!  This is a great way for your child to express their creativity, and a great lesson in visualizing something and seeing it thru to completion.

I promise to add our cow and submarine once they are done, until then,…

Happy Valentines Day!!