DIY: Long-distance Valentine

Valentine's Day was Friday, so I am going to share with you what I did for my boyfriend. You may not know (but you do now), that I am in a long-distance relationship with my boyfriend of almost three years. The past few weeks have been tough on us, so I decided to make this simple DIY for my boyfriend for Valentine's Day (I did not post this sooner because I did not want him to see what it was before it arrived).

Feel free to use my idea for any time when you are gone from your significant other, whether it be for Valentine's Day, the military, an extended trip, or a long-distance relationship. It will give your love something to remind him/her of you every day until the day you can be together again.

Also, in case you just want to skim over this project, I put the key ideas in bold so you can find and make this project on your own.

The first thing I did was gather everything I needed to make the project:

• 1 box of fold and close sandwich bags (the number of bags you need depended on the number of days in the countdown, I used 16)
• 1 bag of Hershey's Kisses (I was able to use a smaller bag for this project, see below)
• Paper (you can use scrapbook paper if you want, I used printer paper because that's what I had available in my dorm room)
• 1 box to ship the gift to your loved one
• Ideas for what you want to put in the bags

After figuring out my supplies, I had to devise a way to divide my Hershey's Kisses. I bought a 5.3oz bag at my campus market because it said it would contain over thirty Kisses, which would be more than plenty. 

Because I decided that I wanted to use as many as them as possible for each day, I decided that there would be two for each day, even though the project is called "A Kiss A Day." (Who wants only one Hershey's Kiss anyways?)

The exceptions would be for Valentine's Day and the day that I would see my boyfriend. I decided to give him four Kisses on Valentine's Day and included a little poem about how he gets more kisses since it is Valentine's Day. I gave the one left over for the day I was home because it would not be a full day until he saw me.

After dividing the Kisses, I made the banners to top the bags. This way I could keep track of each bag as I filled them with the little notes that accompanied the kisses. 

banners

I do not have a template for these because I just folded some paper and cut it into rectangles, and then cut the triangles off the ends.

I wrote the date on the bag in black and the countdown in red. This would help my boyfriend know which one to open on each day, and also remind him that the days are getting less and less.

After all the Kisses and banners were done, I began the notes to go in the bags.

In each bag, I included:

A note

My notes included five themes. The themes included a love note, a message about why I love him, poem stanzas, and things I cannot wait to do with him when I get home (and in the future)

A quote

Your quotes that you include could be about anything. You could take quotes from your song, favorite movie together, or off the internet. I chose to use quotes that dealt with long-distance relationships. I got my quotes from Loving From a Distance. It is a website that provides insight and support for long-distance couples, and I found some great quotes on there.

A memory

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Just include any memories that you think are important to your relationship.

You could include whatever you want in the bags, such as small gifts or pictures, but I was working with limited time and under a college budget!

My final step before arranging everything in the box was to assemble the bags. I tried my best to relate the memories to the notes or the quotes. It was difficult, and not all of them match up, but I wanted to be as consistent as possible.

Here's a picture of what some of the finished bags looked like (I hid the writing because I want the content to be special between myself and my boyfriend):

Some of the finished bags

Finally, I put all the bags in the box. I folded them so that my boyfriend could not peek at the days ahead and so that they would lay nicely in the box (also, I did end up turning them so that the days went left to right instead of right to left as seen in the picture).

To finish off the project, I made this print-out to cover the bags so that my boyfriend would know the cute little title I came up with: "A Kiss a Day Makes the Time Go Away."

I will also include the print-out in case you want to use my title as well. You can also download the "KISS" font here to make your own label.

Before I sealed up the box, I wrote my boyfriend a letter to explain my little gift, which is an optional step if you do not want to include that.

So that concludes my DIY for today! Leave any comments, questions, or suggestions below!
--The Informed Artist

P.S. Here is a Pinterest-friendly picture for you to pin!