Making Heart-Shaped Candy Boxes

This is the last of the homemade Valentine's gift items that I'll share with you this week -- a handmade, heart-shaped box for the chocolates that I made. BTW, I made dark chocolate almond clusters to go with the heart-shaped chocolates. Nut clusters are a type of candy that are super simple to make, and I wanted just a little more candy for my family members.

Back to the heart-shaped boxes. These definitely took some patience. But I think that they turned out nicely for a homemade box. I used a cracker box for the fronts and backs of the boxes, a thin sheet of poster board for the sides, glue, white paper, gold spray paint, silk roses/leaves and satin ribbon from the free box of craft supplies that I got last summer, scissors, and box cutter.

After opening up the cracker box to lay it flat, I cut a heart out of white paper, then traced around this heart onto the cracker box sheet. This became my template for the remaining heart tops and bottoms. I traced around the first cardboard heart on the rest of the cracker box, 6 times, then cut out all of the hearts. I also cut 6 hearts from a sheet of plain white paper, trimming them down about 1/4-inch all around. I used the box cutter to cut long strips of the poster board. After cutting the strips, I scored each along the long side about 1/3-inch from one edge. I cut tabs all along the narrow side of the scoring. Using tacky glue, I formed the poster board strip as well as I could into a heart on the underside of the cracker box hearts. I worked in pairs, making the sides slightly larger on one heart, and slightly smaller on the other. Before setting each pair aside to fully dry, I checked to making sure the two pieces would fit together, and adjusted the sides as needed. I separated the pairs, and allowed to dry overnight. I also glued a white paper heart into each cardboard heart to conceal the rough work of the tabs glued to the base.

The next day I spray painted the outsides of each box half with gold spray paint.

Once the paint was dry, I matched each heart pair up again.

Using some of the materials that I received in the box of crafting supplies, I glued leaves, roses, and bows to the lid of each box.

What I liked about this project is that many of my imperfections were concealed in one way or another. The gold spray paint wasn't completely smooth, but the roses and leaves obscured that fact. The poster board sides weren't perfectly shaped, but the overhang on the box, combined with the gold spray paint makes that less noticeable. I am pleased with how they turned out and super pleased that they were virtually free. I'll let them dry completely tonight, then fill them with candy in the morning.

Using Flat Soda Pop

My family is not big on drinking soda pop. However, I do keep a 2-litre of lemon-lime in the pantry, for tummy troubles. A problem arises when we don't finish off the entire bottle before it goes flat. Then we're left with a bottled beverage that no one wants to drink. The same thing happens during the holidays when we open a 2-litre of cola. My family will drink the first half of the bottle, but leave the rest untouched. I have found a couple of ways to use flat soda that appeal to my family members.

The first of these concoctions uses lemon-lime soda, gelatin powder, and unsweetened Kool-aid powder. I simply substitute the flat soda pop for juice or water/sugar in making the gelatin, adding a bit of Kool-aid powder (just a small amount, not the whole packet) for flavoring. The above photo is a gelatin salad that I made this week, using cherry Kool-aid, lemon-lime soda, gelatin, chopped fruit, and mini-marshmallows. 

The second concoction was modified from a recipe that I found online for slow-cooker barbecue beef. The online recipe called for ketchup, cola, and Worcestershire sauce poured over a beef roast and cooked in the crockpot. My modification uses browned ground beef (drained), with some ketchup, some canned tomatoes (drained of liquid), soy sauce, and garlic powder, then cooked in the crockpot for a couple of hours. I serve this over hamburger buns, like Sloppy Joes. It has been popular enough in my family that I was requested to make it again for tonight's dinner.