Day 9 Valentine Countdown-Boxed Conversation Hearts

Today is a craft where you put your child's picture into the transparent heart "window" of a vox of conversation hearts. I made these up for my kids' Valentine's Day Baskets (yes, we do Valentine's Baskets, much like an Easter Basket). I like to have them filled up with different surprises that are mostly handmade. This craft can be as simple or as gussied up as you would like it to be. First you need to buy those conversation hearts that are in the individual boxes, with a window in the front. I was surprised that my local Walmart does not have these. Luckily the Dollar Store had them! You carefully open the top up and empty out all the hearts. You will need to clean off the transparency (on the inside) that is covering the window opening. These are quite "dusty" from the candy.
I actually take a paper towel and dampen it a little. Then I wipe it off by putting the paper towel around a dowel, or in this case the bottom of a paint brush! I have short fingers and could not reach all the way to the heart to clean it. Next, you will need a picture of your child. This will be going in the window. I used my kids school pictures. The size just under the wallet size, was just perfect for me! If you need to, you can use tweezers at this point to maneuver the picture.
I applied photo mounting squares to each of the corners of the picture (on the front side of the picture) to attach it with. You could use double sided tape or glue as well. You want to move the picture around until you have the positioning that you like the best. My boxes of conversation hearts had a very low dip on the top of the heart, so I had to be careful this wasn't cutting into my kids' faces. I again used the paint brush handle to push the corners of the photo to make sure there was a good bond between the picture and the box.
One option for these is to add magnet to the back. This is the way that I like to use them. We have a metal door so we can just stick them on the inside of the door to be seen by all our guests. Or you can stick them on your refrigerator. I have large rolls of magnet, so that's what I used. I traced the box onto the magnet and made sure to cut inside of that line, so that none of the magnet will be showing. You could also use magnet circles, especially if you are giving these as gifts and still want the "To" and "From" portion to be seen on the back! I am sure Grandparents would love these as gifts. Or you might not even want to use them this way and so you can skip this step all together. I applied my magnet with a spray on adhesive. As always when using this type of glue I use a clothespin to hold the item with while I spray, so that I don't get any of the spray on my fingers!
Then, just attach the magnet to the back of the box. You can see here that almost the entire back of the box is covered with a magnet. I like to make sure these can hang, even when they are full of candy!
At this point you could be finished. However, you can do so much more with these if you want to. I printed up the words "Mom's" and "Nana's", in red, on white cardstock. I like to cover where it says "Necco" on the box. This way the box reads, "Mom's Sweetheart". I had some Valentine Stickers that I also used to decorate one box with. I used one heart to cover the S in the large word "Sweetheart". A jewel, brad, or even a flower would look really cute there as well. I added another jeweled heart to the beginning of the "Mom's" embellishment that I added.
I love ribbon. So, another way that I decorated my kids boxes (I did each one differently) was by just adding a ribbon around it and tying a bow at the top. I did put a few photo mounting squares around the sides of the box to hold the ribbon in place.
Don't forget that if you are doing these for gifts for a school class or a church class, many times they wont want you giving out candy that you opened the box of. An easy solution for this is to buy the conversation hearts that are in individual bags. You would just add one bag to the box, before you seal the top back up!

Aren't these cute? Sorry for the boxes having no pictures in them to show you, but I think you get the picture even without it! ;) I started pulling my crop-a-dile out and was thinking of adding some jeweled brads inside the hearts...or around the sides of these boxes it's not terribly exciting so I was thinking some coordinating paper would be fun! I love paper, as well as ribbon and love any excuse to use it! I think these are another thing that you could do in many different ways.
Rebecca

Linked to Treasures for Tots.