There are certain projects I can always count on my husband tackling for me throughout the year – I call it ‘bonding time’ – but, the bottom line for me is that I don’t have to even THINK about unless they need supplies that they know I already have. Otherwise, the do all the planning, creating, shopping, and putting together of the things. He’s built several valentine boxes, a couple of fun cars for ‘drive in’ movies…and they ALWAYS go over the top and have SO much fun.

This year is no different! My daughter has been an expert on all things Marvel, and I’m pretty sure she’s seen ALL the movies now, even the ones from way back that have been remade a couple of times. When the Super Bowl commercial for the trailer for the Falcon and the Winter Soldier came out, you better believe she had that baby pulled up FAST…and can’t wait to watch it!

Are you ready to see how they put this beautiful Valentine Box together, mostly with items we had on hand? Let’s Get started! You’ll find, at the end of the post, some downloadable images that you can print at home for personal use.

In case you end up doing a little at a time, or want to come back to this post for reminders, here are some jump links so you can skip down to where you want to go:

(SKIP THIS AND GET STARTED)

• Supplies
• Constructing Your Box
  • Opening for Valentines
  • Back Flap
  • Holes for your craft sticks (billboard)
  • Billboard
  • Sign on Top of your redbox
  • Taping it all together
  • Painting or wrapping your box
• Decorating your Box
  • Creating your own graphics
  • Using my graphics (downloads are here)
• Finishing Touches

Supplies

The main list is what they used to make my daughter’s box. You will also see some possible substitution options to create yours.

Shoe Box	Any rectangular box.
Duct Tape	Shipping tape, masking tape
Large Wooden Craft sticks	tongue depressors, small pieces of wood or cardboard
Red Spray Paint	red wrapping paper, construction paper, etc.
Plexiglass square	cling wrap, clear plastic from a bag, etc…
Pictures of your favorite movies	these can be real or made up movie titles
Glue Stick	tape, adhesive spray
Gorilla Glue	Super glue or hot glue
Box cutter, scissors, etc…	something to cut things
Chair Glide (goes on foot of a chair or stool to avoid scratching floor)	button, string, any makeshift knob. or just cut a hole/flap to open the back of the box to retrieve all the goodies.
Printer to print your pictures!	Alternatively, you can send these to an office supply store or photo printer. If you choose this option, you’ll want to do pretend titles as they won’t be able to print copyrighted material for you.

Constructing Your Box

You’ll want to put all of the base pieces together before trying to paint you box, assuming you are painting it. If you are using some sort of wrapping paper or construction paper, you may need to mix these steps up a bit. there are no measurements here, as your box size may vary, and this project works JUST FINE with ‘eye-balling’ things.

You’ll want to think out your openings, and where you’re going to place your side display board. Consider those, and go ahead and cut your openings for inserting valentines, and for removing them.

✂ The opening for classmates to insert Valentine’s should be big enough to fit those fun oversized Valentine’s without bending or stuffing them, but not big enough to fit a hand through.

• This will be a large, rectangular opening with no flap.

✂ The back flap, where cards will be removed at home, is a bit bigger.

• A box cutter is the easiest way to cut this out.
• Make sure it’s not too close to an edge.
• Those little hands will be eager to pull everything out. This cut on three sides, so that it can fold down. The cardboard will hold itself closed…so this is very easy.
• You are NOT adding the pull tab at this point. There is still painting to do.

✂ Poke or cut to small holes to put your craft sticks through – use those to measure your holes.

• Our holes for this are about 1/4 inch from the edge of the box.
• Later, you’re going to put your two craft sticks through these holes, you’re going to tape them on the inside for stability. Unless you happen to have red ones, you’ll want to paint or color them first.

✂ Grab a box and cut one of the flaps off. This is going to be your billboard attached to the side. We all have lots of amazon boxes to utilize for this right?

• Ours was a couple of inches shorter than the shoe box.
• Make sure it’s wide enough for two columns of movie images – the size of these is unimportant – but they do want to be uniform. We will get to that later.

✂ Cut a semicircle or rectangle for your sign on top of the RedBox.

• One of the remaining flaps on the box you used for the billboard will work for this.
• The width, obviously, should match the width of the box.
• Use a plate or other large round object to trace before cutting if you need help making a nice semicircle.
• You can ‘downsize’ this later if needed.

🖌 Paint or color your craft sticks if necessary. This is just easier to do now. You can skip this step, and paint them with the rest of your box if you’d like.

• Go ahead and put them through the holes you made above.

👷🏼‍♀️ Let’s Tape it all together!

1. Insert your craft sticks and tape those securely to the inside of the box.
   • Ours have about two inches of the stick inside the box.
   • Tape these securely with Duct tape or Shipping Tape.
2. Tape your box closed with Duct or shipping tape.
   1. If you have a sturdy shoe box, just make sure it’s sealed well and will stand up to the trip to school.
   2. If you box is thinner/flimsier, you can use extra tape here for stability.
3. Tape your billboard to the craft sticks. (See image above for how that looks)
4. Tape your sign to the back of the box. Tape this again on the front for stability.
   • If you look closesly at the image below, you can see the front tape. Where that is on the flap is covered by the graphic that we added later.
   • If your sign is a little flimsy, you can use an extra craft stick to ensure that it stands up.

🖌 Paint your box RED!

• They used spray paint.
• Of course, you can use another color – red is optional 🙂
• You can also wrap your box with red wrapping paper, construction paper, etc. If you do this, you will want to do the wrapping before fully assembling your box (do your wrapping before this step).
  • If you wrap rather tan paint, you won’t need to wrap your sign at the top of the box. Your graphics will cover that. Just cover the main shoe box and the billboard.

Let’s Decorate it!

This is the fun part…the graphics. Now, you can go crazy with details here: extra signage, keypads, payment swiper, etc…they kept it rather simple…

Basically you have two options – create your own graphics, or use mine or someone else’s!

You just need some basic photo or graphic editing software, or an app or online program.

Here are some options:

• Google Drawings
• Canva
• WordSwag App
• Your PC or Device software/apps

Creating your own:

• Keep in mind that any registered logos or copyrighted materials, like redbox or movie graphics should only be used for personal use. So, don’t be offering to create these boxes and sell them. Company’s are generally ok with their artwork being used for educational purposes…I suppose it’s a matter of who you ask whether a Valentine Box is ‘educational’.
• Have fun with it! Make up fun movie titles, draw or create images for those movies – have the family pose for fun movie posters! Get the pets in on the fun! Think Parodies…I’d love to know what you come up with! You can add your photos to the Pinterest post HERE, or comment below where I can find them!

Using my images:

• Again, I am providing these images for PERSONAL USE ONLY.
• I have provided some already finished graphics, as well as some that you can use to get started.
• You are more than welcome to crop and edit the images provided to create this project to make them your own.
• Please do not edit the blog post photos – those are from our personal project. You are welcome to save and share those.

Use the following images, or download PDF versions:

Placing and sizing your images:

This might take a little trial and error – you can actually be precise and use measurement, if you’d like. Here are couple of ways to to test out your graphics:

• Set your measurements in inches on your graphic/photo tools
• Print your images in black and white or ‘draft mode’ to test them out.
• Cut out a couple of images and lay them on your box (lay this flat on your work surface) to see how they look.
• Just print them out and see how it works!
• Make adjustments as needed before printing again, you can resize, or adjust the size % on your document or printer settings.
  • Look for the word ‘SCALE’ in your print settings – mine shows on the print preview just before hitting print.
  • I have made some of these images larger than necessary for purposed of better quality, and more flexibility for your creation.
• Use a glue stick or spray adhesive to stick your images onto your redbox.

Finishing Touches

Just two little things here…unless you’d like to add other touches, that’s totally up to you!

These steps are entirely optional.

The screen.

We used a small square of plexiglass and cut that down to size. My husband used a box cutter to cut this. They got the plexiglass at Hobby Lobby for about $1.50. His advice on this:

• Use a box cutter with fresh blade to cut your plexiglass.
• Use a straight edge (sturdy ruler, etc) to guide your ut so that you can cut straight and deep enough that you can pop it with a clean break.
• Be sure to sand/file/ smooth, any sharp edges if your break isn’t clean.
• He regrets not getting a second sheet to cover the billboard – but that’s their OCD of perfect projects 🙂
• You can get 5×7 sheets on Amazon HERE, and potentially avoid cutting altogether.

Other options:

• Cut a gallon size Ziploc bag and tape or glue that over your screen graphic.
• Use a a clear overlay or sheet protector
• a plastic cover from a photo frame
• Cling Wrap

👷🏼‍♂️ Add a pull tab to your flap in the back.

• They used a ‘chair glide foot’ with the nail cut down and taped over as a ‘pull tab’. (See Photo Above)
• This step is more decorative than necessary
  • Use whatever you happen to have on hand!
  • You can just cut a small semicircle in the top center of the flap, or add a button, a tab from a soda can, or whatever you’d like to use to open your flap.

If you create this project and share it in blog post or on social media, I’d appreciate you linking back to this post!

You can add your photos to the Pin HERE, or comment below and let me know where I can see your creations!

If you’d like to reblog this post, please reach out to me here or comment below.

What do you need to tackle today?

You just might give me some ideas for projects I need to tackle!

My goal is to bring you a new “TACKLE TUESDAY” post each week as we move through out this year. Some will be personal and household related, others will be business related.