Hi there!
I will be the first to tell you that I am NOT a crafty mama! I don't make a habit of creating things, but in this case I couldn't find a better option.
I've been so terrible about keeping my littles' keepsakes organized. They all have partially filled-out baby books, that are leaking with extra papers shoved inside - first plane tickets, certificates from baseball games, random photos, first crayon scribbles, umbilical cords in ziplock bags (seriously), etc. I've been wanting to get keepsake boxes for each child for a long time, but kept putting it off. Well, blogging was my motivation to finally do it! But...I couldn't find a box that I liked!!! So, I decided to create one on my own.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED -
Storage boxes of your desired size
Wood or foam letters to spell your child's name
Wooden letter for the first initial
Wooded or foam shapes that your child will enjoy (I chose 2 wooded animals for each child's box)
Puffy Paint
Hot glue gun
HOW I MADE THEM -
I found these simple boxes on Amazon (LINK)
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I didn't want anything TOO big, but big enough that their baby books and other little keepsakes could easily fit inside. These are definitely the perfect size.
Then, I went to Michael's. I rarely venture into this store, but man! Is it fun!!! I ended up buying way too much stuff totally unrelated to this project, but...oh well.
Here's a snap of all the things I ended up using for these boxes -
Very basic - foam, letters, wooden letters, wooden animals and puffy paint.
First things first, I pulled the letters for each kid's name. The PROBLEM - I bought 2 bags of foam letter because my first 2 kids have long names and I wanted to make sure I had enough A's and S's. But, even this plan didn't work, because these particular letters don't have every letter in every color. So, I had to do some improvising. I ended up doing a patter for #3's name, I could only do #2 and #3's nick names and #3, well...I made an "L" out of two "I's", because I couldn't make it work any other way! But in the end, that all worked out.
The letters had peel-and-stick backs, and then I added hot glue for extra sticking power.
After I gathered the correct letters in the correct colors, I centered them on the lip of the box and hot glued them down. I started with the middle letter to make sure the name was centered properly.
Then I moved on to the top of the box. I chose the wooden initial for the box I was working on and simply applied it to the top of the box with hot glue. Then I chose the animals I wanted to go with the box. For #3, I chose a turtle and a monkey, just because they are cute like him!
These were $2 each and super cute!
After I glued on the on the initial and animals, I used the puffy paint to add polka dots to the wooden letter.
And, DONE. Here's the final product!
This was SUPER SIMPLE and didn't take much time at all. Besides the hassle of finding the correct letters in the correct color, each box took less than 10 minutes to complete. And, as you can see, there is PLENTY of room for keepsakes to be added over the years. The baby book only takes up a small amount of space.
These will fit perfectly on a shelf in each kid's closet. I'm glad I decided to do this on my own instead of paying for a pre-made box. I also think when the kids are older, I'll let them add their own touches to their boxes because there is plenty of space on the sides to add things.
So that's it! Let me know if you have any questions!
Until next time,
xoxo
