Make A Family Love Note Mailbox

My children love writing notes and drawing pictures for our family and their friends, so that is why I decided to make a mailbox for our home for Valentine’s Day.

From now until February 14, the whole family is going to write love notes to each other and “mail” them in our Love Mailbox, and then on Valentine’s we will open the box and read all the sweet notes we have sent to each other over the course of the previous month.

The only problem I see is that in a family of 7, I may have used too small a box! My children are so excited over this idea they have been writing love notes like crazy! I may have to put a limit on the number of notes to be mailed each day so our box doesn’t run out of room. Or I could always make another one; it only took a couple hours, and most of that was drying time.

If you want to make a mailbox for your family, or even for your classroom, you just need a few basic supplies.

I seem to have tons of Young Living boxes lying around my garage (I love my essential oils!), so I used one of the NingXia Red ones. It is about the size of a shoe box, but really any size or type of box will work.

First I pulled off the plastic tape that was holding the ends together, because it is difficult to paint over plastic, and then closed the ends back up with plain paper masking tape.

Then I cut a mail slot into the top with my box cutter. If you are doing this with kids, an adult should handle the box cutter. My husband cut his hand with one at work once and needed stitches, so it’s not something you would want a child to get a hold of.

Then I painted the top and sides of the box in Tuscan Red acrylic paint. I needed 2 coats to fully cover the writing on the box. You can see in this picture that I used the slot to steady the box while painting the sides.

Next I used 3D paint in Iridescent Gold to write on the front and make the hearts on the top, and 3D paint in Gold Glitter to outline the slot. You could really let your imagination go wild at this point and decorate it however makes you happy, though. You could put stickers, cut-out construction paper hearts, whatever you want.

To make the flag, I painted a craft stick black and used Elmer’s Glue to tape it to the side of the box. I cut a triangle out of cardstock, painted it gold, and glued it to the top of the stick.

That’s it. Super simple project. It only took me half of an afternoon, and like I said before most of that time was waiting for the box to dry between coats of paint. I let it dry completely overnight before the kids could start mailing their letters.

Here are a couple more pictures of the finished project:

Let me know if you made one. I would love to see how yours turns out!

I might be linked up to some of these awesome blogs!