Share love and positivity through crafting with your teen

The last two weeks have been especially hard on my teen daughter. She has been sick, she’s on a hybrid in person/online school program so she can’t interact with her friends, the weather is nasty so she can’t enjoy her normal outdoor activities AND she’s supposed to commit to a college. That’s a lot to take on! We were chatting one day after school recently that we missed the fun, carefree days of elementary school. This time of year, we’d be focusing our efforts on designing a cool Valentine’s box for the class party. Like a light being turned on, we thought, what is stopping us from doing this now? We gathered up supplies to make a quick Valentine’s box. It’s an easy way to share love and positivity through crafting with your teen.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

This post is sponsored by DesignBundles. All comments and opinions and love of crafting are my own.

Establishing your Valentine’s Box theme:

Like all good craft projects, you’ll need to spend some time on establishing your Valentine’s box theme. My daughter and I did this by looking at craft supplies we already had on hand and picking our colors. We have several types of paper on hand for making cards, gift tags and wrapping gifts. We also had hearts and stickers to use, so we had just a few things to add to our shopping list!

Shop your Craft Supplies First:

The goal for this crafting project, wasn’t perfection. My goal was to have fun sharing this special bonding time with my daughter. Our shopping trip was just a part of the creative process because we went in with a loose vision, that changed and expanded with the craft supplies available to us.

We found these adorable pink Pom Pom flowers first.

Then we found a wide assortment of wrapping paper on sale, so we chose this gorgeous metallic pink paper to wrap our Valentine’s box. Lastly, we grabbed two metallic craft pens and a set of shiny pink bead stickers, a red plastic tablecloth and we were all set.

Valentine’s box Supplies:

Here’s what we used to create our vibrant Valentine’s box, but please feel free to substitute items listed with things you have on hand.

1 medium white gift box
1 roll wrapping paper
3 sheets of card stock paper to make homemade hearts
1 package foam hearts
Stickers of your choice
2 metallic craft pens (we used silver and pink)
1 Plastic tablecloth
Scissors
Tape
Box cutter (to make hole on top of box for cards)

Set up your crafting spot:

Thinking back to when my girls were younger, I remember having to move their after-school crafting projects off the kitchen table often. If we needed more space, (like my daughter and I did for this craft) we would use the dining room table, or sometimes, if we were finger painting, I’d clear a spot on the kitchen floor. One item that served me well then and now is a plastic tablecloth. You can find these at your local dollar store, and they are worth every single cent in my opinion because they make clean up a breeze.

Let your creativity flow:

My Favorite Part: Handmade Hearts and Conversation:

This is where the sharing love part came in. While our hands were busy cutting paper hearts of all sizes, our minds were free to think about big and small parts of our lives. We talked and shared and sorted and figured some things out. Having this time to create and bond of our shared love of crafting made parts of our conversation lighter and easier and what parent or teen doesn’t want that? Did we solve all our woes while making a throw back to elementary school Valentine’s box? No, we didn’t, but we sure made progress and had a happy love filled day in the process and that is a total win!

Final Step: Printing Valentine’s Day Cards for our box:

Source: Design Bundles

We love how our Valentine’s box turned out! The only thing left is to make each family member a card to go in the box. For that I’m turning to the awesome SVG files I found at Design Bundles. Aren’t these the cutest cut our cards? This whole bundle is affordable and available for instant download. They have free options as well!

If you’ve never checked out their site, you should soon! Design Bundles has tons of tools and inspirations to help you create cards for any occasion. In fact, their Share the Love Mission is going strong right now, just in time for Valentine’s Day crafting. Read on to hear about it in Design Bundles own words.

About Design Bundles Share the Love Campaign:

Design Bundles Share the Love campaign Hearts

Source: Design Bundles

“Throughout the pandemic, loneliness is an increasing concern for so many of us. More than ever, we're looking for different ways to spread the love – whether that’s to loved ones or smiles to strangers. If you’re dressing up your doorway, writing cards or celebrating Valentines with a loved one, Design Bundles has tons of tools and inspirations to help action this. They have pledged to be a part of this cause and to help spread positivity through creativity and crafting.

Spreading positivity and joy is food for the soul and can be so much fun to dive into. As well as being craft and creation addicts and advocates, they are helping to share resources and helplines to help battle loneliness for anyone in need.”

To learn more about Design Bundles Share the Love Campaign, or to explore their vast SVG files, craft templates and more please visit their website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. They love to see our creations, so be sure to tag them @designbundles in posts and use the hashtags #designbundles and #dbsharethelove.

National Help Lines from NAMI:

There are times in all our lives where we wish we had somebody to talk to that could understand our struggle. Now more than ever, we all could use a little help in one form or another. Here is a list of top Help Lines Numbers from the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).

To view their complete list or to find assistance locally, please visit the NAMI website.

Be Kind and Love Yourself:

Sometimes to keep moving forward, you have to look back at how far you’ve come. We all travel different roads, so please be kind to yourself today and always love yourself first so you’ll be equipped to give love. For me, sharing an afternoon of love and positivity while crafting with my teen was showing love and kindness to both of us. It’s amazing how much better crafting can make you feel, so please try crafting something soon.

Please share in comments: Do you enjoy crafting with your teen/family?

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