Valentine's Day Box

Last year Amelia had her first Valentine's Day at school, but I barely pulled it together in time.  If not for a dear friend of mine (thank you Lori W), I would not have even had valentines for her to take to school.  It was completely off my radar screen because of all the work Olivia was taking at the time.

This year, we received a notice early to have shoe boxes and valentines ready for tomorrow.  So my uncrafty self came up with a fun craft that Amelia and I could do together.  It's stolen and modified from a more complicated craft online, but I love how it turned out.  It literally cost me nothing, as I already had the supplies. 

The best part of it is the fun we have had making this together.  We worked on it a little bit each day, and she was always so excited to do her part.  She was able to do most of it herself, with just a small amount of input from me.  She can hardly wait to go to school tomorrow and show off her work.  Not only that, but she had a few design suggestions that were better than mine.  Seriously, I am very lame in the decorating department.  Bested by a 4 year old. 

Yesterday while finishing up, she was also rocking a pink fairy costume with pink/orange argyle leggings and black boots; she'd asked me to pin her hair up into "princess hair" and then she got dressed.  She definitely has some style.

Here is what we did:  (I took pictures, but on a video camera that I don't know how to download from)
1)  Covered a shoe box in scrapbook paper.  I cut the pieces to fit, she put glue on the box and put the paper on.
2)  She stamped the inside lid of the box with all kinds of her little stamps - flowers, birds, hearts, etc
3)  She wrote her name on a piece of scrapbook paper and that was glued to the side of the box.
4)  I took another, complementary vintage pinkish design scrapbook paper, drew 6 rectangles on them and let her cut along the lines using the scrapbooking scissors with the wavy lines that make pretty edges.  I didnt' care if it was perfect, she cut pretty well but it still looked hand made.  Nice.
5)  Then I picked out purple, pink, red, blue crayons and gave her a pencil sharpener to shave crayons with into small bowls.
6)  I tore off two sheets of waxed paper and laid one sheet on top of a paper sack on an ironing board.  The paper sack is essential if you don't want to buy another fabric cover for your ironing board.  I had also lowered the ironing board to its lowest height.
7)  She sprinkled the different colors around the wax paper.  One thing I would do differently if I did a project like this again is to have her leave a bit more room between the colors.  They spread pretty well once they melted.
8)  I put the second piece of wax paper on top and then let her iron, with my hand on top of hers on the iron.  She pretty much directed the iron; I just wanted to make sure I had it just in case. The wax melted instantly. 
9)  While the crayons were cooling, she wrote her name on the back of all the cards. 
10)  Once cool, and while she was still writing, I took the fancy scrapbooking scissors and cut out hearts free form. 
11)  She worked over a paper bag; put glue on the hearts and put them in the middle of the scrapbook paper on the pretty design.  Originally I wanted her to put the hearts on the white part of the paper, the back of it by her name.  I thought the hearts would show up better.  Shows  how much design sense I have.  She didn't like that idea, hence the change. 
12) She saw some purple ribbons and wanted that, so she picked out two types of ribbon and I cut them and made little bows by just wrapping the skinny one around the middle of the bigger one and tying it in a knot.  She glued those onto the cards.

All this took about 4-5 days, working a little bit each day on it to accomodate the attention span of a 4 year old.  It was a peaceful, fun project to do together.  I can hardly wait to see her excitement again in the  morning as she takes them to school.