Doggy Valentine’s Day Box

Valentine’s Day will be the first holiday I get to celebrate with my new co-workers. This year, we will be decorating boxes and passing out valentines to everyone.  Considering my competitive nature, I did not take this box-decorating lightly.  I am still the new girl in the office, so I had to bring my A-game.  Naturally, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration.  There was one box in particular that caught my attention right away.  It was a dog that appeared to be made out of a mop.  I immediately began drawing up my plans to recreate this adorable pooch.  Here is the adorable creature that forced me to get creative:

via Pinterest

I made a trip to Michael’s craft store to gather some supplies.  I wasn’t sure how the dog’s head was made exactly, so I had to get creative.  Here are the supplies that I used to create the entire dog:

Hot glue gun, yarn, packaging tape, masking tape, toilet paper roll, egg-shaped styrofoam, blue ribbon, googly eyes, red felt, and black pom-poms.

 

I started by taking a strip of masking tape that was equal to the length of each side of the box I was going to use.  I folded the yarn along the tape like the picture above.  I did this for each side of the box and did maybe 4-5 layers total. Then I would cut the center of each loop to give it that “shaggy” appearance as pictured below.

 

Then it was time to start cutting a hole on top of the box and form the frame of the head.  I cut out the hole with a knife after tracing out the desired size.  Then, this is where I had to get creative with the head.  I hot-glued a toilet paper roll to the box to form a neck.  I cut out an oval shape for the styrofoam head to set on with more stablility.  I also had to use some q-tips to pierce the base of the styrofoam head and into the body of the box.  I hot-glued this in place as well for better reinforcement.

 

 

I continued to tape the layers onto the box with packaging tape so it would be less visible on the top of the body.  I used scraps of yarn from trimming the other bits around the body to hot-glue onto the head of the dog. For the ears, I used q-tips and two cardboard cut-outs for the shape, and just hot-glued the strands of yarn to it.  I tied smaller ribbons around each ear for looks.  I also used a thicker ribbon for the collar around the neck.  Then I just added the finishing touches of eyes, ears, and tongue to the head, and the dog was complete!

I don’t think Cooper was a fan of the fake dog on the table, haha

 

 

 

And there you have it!  My Pinterest-inspired Doggy Valentine’s Day Box!  Who knows, maybe next year, I will have another box to create.  I hope you enjoyed my post today.  It was so much fun getting creative for this project.  Have a great rest of your weekend, and Happy early Valentine’s Day!

Love always,

Jillian Wade