Perry and Lego Head Valentine's Boxes

More Valentine's boxes finished, so though we would share them.

My 6th grader's box is Perry the Platapus from the Disney show Phineas and Ferb, which we all happen to love!  We love it so much, in fact, that we named our kitten Peri the Catapus after Secret Agent P.

Supplies: Shoe box, blue paper (I bought a sheet of Canson paper at Hobby Lobby), orange cardstock, orange marker, toilet paper roll, black and white cardstock scraps, glue, and tape.

It's pretty self-explanatory, but we used 1 toilet paper roll cut in 4 pieces, rolled tighter and covered in blue paper for the legs.  Oval and circle paper punches were used for the eyes (but you could just cut some out), and based the bill and tail on a free printable we saw here on Family Fun's website. We outlined the orange with a darker orange marker.  Pretty simple after we saw a pattern for the bill, and we think he is totally "AAAHHH"  worthy!

The Lego Man Head idea was in no way an original idea.  We saw some on Pinterest and my Lego loving 4th grader was all for it.  Especially since we had to buy a 5.5 lb. container of Red Vines licorice!

After washing the container and peeling off the label the best we could, my husband spray painted it with Rustoleum Gloss Sun Yellow spray paint.  We let it dry overnight then my son punched out some eyes and drew a mouth on black cardstock and glued them on.  The quickest Valentine's box ever!  We were going to cut a slit in the lid, but decided it might leave sharp edges on the plastic.  So they can just open the lid to drop them in.

You can find Red Vines here!

Hope this inspires you with your Valentine's Box headaches fun!

Cookie Monster Valentine Box

The other night we needed to make an impromptu Valentine's box for my son.  Without any warning (or time) we had to use what we had on hand.  Due to the busy day I had, we happened to have a Sam's Club pizza box, and the plastic cover happened to remind us of Cookie Monster's mouth.  So that's what it became!

We just covered the box with blue paper, the inside of the box with black paper (so the Valentines will show inside his mouth) and added big circles for eyes.  There is an opening in the top to drop cards in.  The cookies are made from oval die cuts that my son drew chocolate chips on.  Super easy and cute!

Valentine's Boxes

It's projects like this that I can't make up my mind about.  Do I love them, or do I hate them?  I guess it's a little of both.  Certain projects take up a lot of time even though you know it's going to be something that's temporary.  But once it's done, you love the end results and it was worth it.

Over the past few years my kids haven't really had to make many Valentine's boxes because they have usually done them as an art project at school.  But this year both of my Elementary age boys had to make one. And they were for a contest.  I think the contest part was what got me going, because I knew we could come up with awesome designs.

First comes motivation.  We happened to have a yellow shoe box sitting on the floor next to our Minion goggles that came with our Despicable Me movie, and wala!  The goggles fit the box and the idea was born.  My youngest son LOVES the movie Despicable Me, so he was all for the idea.

Evan is in second grade, and this wasn't exactly the easiest project for him, but after I drew all of the patterns on the paper he did as much punching, cutting, and gluing as he could (except for those darn overall straps which weren't very easy.)  And a MINION was born!

He was named Evan, after my son, and turned out so cute!  His mouth is where you put in the Valentine's cards.  The eyes are circle punches, the arms are rolled up newspaper covered in yellow construction paper, and the boots are toilet paper tubes and black craft foam.

Noah's box was inspired from the Family Fun website, and the fact that I had some chrome spray paint in the garage.   His dad hooked in a piece of wire for the lock to hang on and the opening is at the top.  He wanted it completely taped shut so that no one could get into it.

Noah was able to do most of this himself and it turned out great.  No, he's not that big of a Steeler's fan, but his teacher is, and most of his classmates, so he was going for the popular vote.

Despite taking up an entire afternoon, we have two very happy boys, determined to win today, and proud to show off their Valentine's boxes.  Although the minion may have just joined the family because they boys keep hugging it and said he's staying forever.