Valentine’s Day Card Holders

Each year, our homeschool co-op has a Valentine’s Skating party where we exchange Valentine’s. Here are our Valentine’s Day card holders for this year! I let the kids get creative each year and this year I think they did a great job! Actually, my son was sick with the stomach bug and my daughter came up with the Creeper idea for him. We started to work and when he felt better, he joined in by helping glue the paper to the boxes.

I’ll try to give you some directions for how we made both. I’m sorry, but I didn’t take pictures along the way. We had a super busy week!

Creeper Box Directions:

You will need –

1 medium box

1 long box

4 Pop Tart Boxes

Hot glue (and plenty of it!)

Regular school glue

Paintbrush or sponge brush

Creeper paper pattern (I just Googled Creeper pattern.)

Here’s what we did –

First, I hot glued all the boxes together. Next, I printed out creeper patterns. I blew the one for the face up to 11 by 17 so that it would be as close to one piece as possible. The others are really just a hodge-podge, but due to the nature of the pattern, you really can’t tell.

Glue the paper patterns to the creeper using regular school glue applied to the box with a paintbrush or sponge brush. This helps keep down ripples and gives you a smoother look.

Finally, we cut a hole in the front to deposit the cards.

Dog Box Directions:

You will need –

1 medium box

1 Oatmeal container

2 yarn mops (or more, depending on the size of your box)

ribbon (for the bows and tag)

2 large wiggly eyes

red felt (tongue)

black felt (nose)

What we did –

We took the yarn mops apart. This was easier than we thought (I actually thought I’d just have to cut the strands loose). You just remove the nail and the wire that is wrapped around the yarns to keep them in place.

I put a long piece of tape on the table (the length of the box). I placed it sticky side up and secured the ends by taping them to the table. Then, my daughter folded the mop yarns in half and laid them on the tape. She continued until she had covered the entire length of the tape.

Next, I ran a long line of hot glue to the box. We turned the tape upside downs so that the yarn was on the bottom and laid it on the glue. Then, we peeled off the tape (which was on top). We continued to do that with the other side and with the back and front.

For the head, we hot glued yarn in a circular fashion to the top and bottom of the Oatmeal container. Then, we turned it on it’s side and just hot glued a section of the Oatmeal box at a time and laid the yarn strands on the glue until one side of the Oatmeal box was covered.

We hot glued the head to the body.

For the ears, I just tied 5 yarn strands together in the middle and hot glued the knot to the box. I did this again for the other ear.

We then added the eyes, nose and tongue.

Finally, we hot glued the tag on, which was simply a piece of ribbon and a small round label (the kind with the silver rim that you might put on keys.)

I think these were a hit at the Skating party! The kids sure were proud of them!

Here are the boxes we made last year…