love letter boxes

Valentin’s seems like an awfully long way away but I’m sure it will be here before we know it.  If you’re needing a gift idea for your sweetie, here’s an idea: love letter boxes (as in, boxes to store your love letters in).

Michael is a year older than me, so when he went to college I still had one year left in high school.  I didn’t have email, text messaging, or Facebook so we would talk on the phone every night and we sent letters to each other about once a week.  That year for Christmas Michael completely surprised me and blew me away with his Christmas present to me – a hand crafted (by him) wooden box to hold the letters he had sent me.

Isn’t it beautiful?  He did everything – chose the wood, cut, sanded, stained, and built this box.

You can’t see the bottom but it’s lined with felt and after 7 years it’s pretty full of letters, cards, and other mementos.

He also had this plaque engraved and put it on the inside of the lid of the box.

It is absolutely beautiful!

This box is one of my most prized possessions and one of my all-time favorite gifts.

Over that time Michael had accumulated a lot of letters from me, too.  I’m not quite handy with building things, but I am pretty crafty.  So I also made a letter box for Michael.  Neither of us can remember if I made it for Valentine’s day, anniversary, his birthday, the following Christmas, or just for no reason at all; but the point is, I made him one as well.

I used a white box (the kind you can buy at craft stores to store picture in) and covered it with pictures, quotes cut out from magazines, and other memorable things such as movie tickets.  This was my first experience with modge podge, which I used to glue everything down.

I covered nearly every inch of the box – the top the bottom, the sides, the underside of the lid, and the inside of the box with all kinds of stuff

The bottom says “Friendship sometimes ends in love, but love in friendship never ends”.  It’s worn off over the years as the modge podged bottom tends to stick to the dresser.

My modge podge job has help up ok over the years, although there are a few places that have torn (as you can see on the top of the box)

But anyway, now Michael has a place to keep all the letters and cards I give him.

A box like the one I made could even be altered to make for a teenage girl to keep her special stuff in.  I know my friends and I loved cutting phrases and words out of magazines and using them to decorate all sorts of stuff!