Craft-Wrapped Candy Hearts

Boooooooooring!

In case you haven't noticed, Valentine's Day was this week. Personally, I celebrated by working on my graduate thesis (yes, LAME). However, I did spontaneously purchase a package of boxed candy conversation hearts last week, and since I really don't need to eat eight boxes of candy hearts, I thought they would be fun little gifts for a few friends. However, their packaging was a bit plain... so, you know what that means! ;)


In keeping true to this blog's name, I began scouting around for some inspirational ideas that I could recreate with materials I already had. A few weeks ago I scored some fun things at Target during their after-Christmas clear-out:

The cute little owl ornament (I think it was 20 cents?) now sports some bright ribbons that camouflage his little hanging loop and perches on my desk in pretty much the same spot as in the photo. I found the baker's twine for a dollar (incorrectly mixed in with clearance, but still, it was only a dollar!) and have been seriously digging it for the past few weeks - I even purchased brown parcel paper to coordinate with it, which it does, marvelously. And who doesn't love some decorated wooden buttons? At any rate, the baker's twine was the main design element that I wanted to incorporate, so I Googled something to the effect of "Baker's Twine Valentine's Day Decorating Ideas" and got back a slew of results - here are a few:

Top left (from here): Liked the idea of sewing with baker's twine (heads up, it's a bit difficult, even with an oversized cross stitch needle)
Top middle (from here): My new favorite decorating aesthetic - brown parcel paper wrapped with baker's twine
Right (from here): "Stitching" a button on with baker's twine (again, a bit difficult, especially because baker's twine tends to unravel when you mess with it too much... i.e. fuss with it using a needle and needle threader)
Bottom left (from here): SUCH a cute heart garland
Bottom middle (from here): Aha! A way to include my favorite medium: old book! :P

In the end, I chose to wrap my boxes with book pages over brown parcel paper, keeping the baker's twine as an accent and incorporating some of the ideas from above. I also raided my sticker collection (yes, I'm five) and found some great 3D flower stickers that I'd tucked away that introduced a nice blue to the red/pink/white color palette. 

Hmmm, which ones are more awesome? ;)

 I recreated the heart garland with some glittered/patterned cardstock using double-stick tape (a girl's best friend, imho). I did manage to incorporate a button in one design - the difficulty of threading the baker's twine through the needle, then the button, was enough to put me off from trying too much more. So there you have it - it wasn't difficult at all to simply wrap up the boxes (gift-wrapping 101) and decorate with what I had on hand - and they turned out just so gosh darn cute!