Since our daughter is only 21 months old, I thought I’d have a few more years before having homework to complete with her. Nope. On Monday, her daycare folder included a request that, by Friday, we send in a box for her Valentine’s Day cards to go in at their party next week. I love a good craft, but extensive weeknight crafting is just not going to happen for me right now, so I was determined to make a box in one night and spend as little as possible to make it.
I am happy to say that I succeeded! Here’s how I did it:
1. Gather Supplies
Daycare suggested using either a cereal box or a shoe box for the container. Luckily, I’d just bought cereal and had a box available. On my weekly Target run, I picked up some doilies, trim, and heart shapes from the $1 section. *If your child is older (or will be awake during the time you have to make this…), Target also had some peel-and-stick Valentine shapes.
I also had craft glue, spray paint, colored paper, and some gift wrapping trim on hand already.
If you want to be exactly like me, this is when you put a pizza in the oven for dinner.
2. Prep Surface & Paint
I cut the top four flaps off my cereal box using scissors. You could also glue the flaps shut and cut out a hole in the top (like a mailbox), but I thought it might be frustrating for a bunch of almost 2 year olds to try to fit their card through a smaller hole.
Next, I took my box outside to spray paint. The glitter paint is more of an opaque layer, so I covered the entire box in the silver first, let that dry, and then went back over it with a layer of glitter paint.
I later realized I had a bottle of red craft paint that would have been really cute under the glitter and been a little more Valentine’s Day-ish than silver. Oh well!
This is when I took a break to eat dinner and let the coats of paint dry thoroughly (about an hour and a half).
3. Glue Stuff Onto the Box!
While I waited for the box to dry, I cut out little triangles from colored paper and wrote “Caroline” on them to make a banner. If you don’t have colored paper, you could also use a gift bag. Make sure your banner fits before writing on it; mine had to be cut down since my cereal box was narrow. To attach the banner, I put some craft glue on a paper plate and used a q-tip to dab glue on the triangles.
Next, I cut pieces of white doily to fit inside two of my red hearts and attached those to a pink heart.
I attached two hearts under the banner, and glued some trim to the top all the way around the box.
On the back side, I just added three hearts.
And voila, I was done!
Now, this isn’t the most Pinterest worthy craft, and I probably could have been more careful about matching up shades of pink…but for under $10 and about an hour and a half of active time, I’m pleased!
Cost Breakdown:
Cereal box … $0
Colored paper … $0
Spray paint* … $0
Used trim … $0
Fringe trim … $1
Doilies (2 packs of 14) … $1 per pack
Heart shapes (2 packs of 6) … $1 per pack
*Here are the two spray paints that I used (silver, glitter). They’re both on sale for under $5 this week at Hobby Lobby.
