DIY Valentine’s gift – A box of memories + polaroid photos

_{Some items have been gifted}

What do you give to your special someone for Valentine’s Day when you’re both trying to save money and clear the clutter? Something very thrifty and useful, that’s what. I know you wouldn’t expect anything less from me so I’m happy to oblige! I’ve upcycled a gift box that I received for Christmas, used a left-over piece of wallpaper and lots of double-sided tape to create a DIY gift for my husband. Read on to find out how I made this quick and simple gift PLUS you can get a discount on printing your own photos at Cheerz.com by using my code CASGRI for £4 off! I want to show my husband lots of love on Valentine’s Day (and on birthdays, at Christmas and every other day too, for that matter) but that doesn’t always mean buying something new. I think that experiences and the resulting memories are more important than buying something from the shops, so I wanted to reflect back on the things we’ve done together over the past year, and create a box of our shared memories to look back at. Of course, I want to make it a bit special for hubby, so I’m including a handful of retro sweets and some photo-strips from the Valentine’s range at Cheerz (use code CASGRI for £4 off!) that I just got printed up. These special Valentine’s products are available to order until 4th Feb so get started now to make sure you receive your photos before the big day! But I’m not just making this DIY gift as a Valentine’s Day treat – oh no, it’s totally practical too. This box provides much-needed storage space for all our photos, ticket stubs and scrapbook bits ‘n’ pieces that we’ve collected up over the past year. They’ve been sitting in my desk drawer and I’d like that space back now please! Plus I’m always happy to recycle something rather than bin it, so this festive gift box (it had chocolates in, can you tell?) gets a new lease of life as a dedicated storage box now that the contents have been eaten. Let me tell you how I revamped this tired old gift box – and don’t forget to enter my giveaway below..! It’s not often that I get photos printed these days, but I found it really easy to create some retro polaroid photos and photo-booth strips using the Cheerz app because I could print straight from Facebook, Instagram or my photostream (or upload files from my laptop too). These are probably the only photos I’ve got from last year because they are all stored away on the computer, but I love to hold an ‘actual’ photo in my hands and show it to other people. Remember the excitement when someone you knew got their film developed at the chemists?! Everyone would gather round to see their photos, and getting a cute Valentine’s box of polaroids in the post from Cheerz gave me exactly the same feeling! If you order some photos use discount code CASGRI for £4 off your order! To give this festive box a ‘romantic’ makeover, I simply covered it with an off-cut of wallpaper, but you could use wrapping paper or print your own design onto A4 paper. Be sure to use a piece of paper that is a little bigger than the box so that there is excess paper at the top edges to fold inside the box. I used double-sided tape all over the box to glue the paper  it, but you could use glue if you’ve got some to hand. When it comes to folding in the ends, try to ‘wrap’ it like a present and tape/glue in place. I then stuffed the box full of photo-boot prints, scribbled loved notes, retro ‘Love Heart’ sweets and chocolate bears, old photos and used ticket stubs from our activities throughout the year. I printed a ‘memories’ banner onto sticky label paper to wrap around the lid of the box, but you could use standard paper with double-sided tape or glue. I placed this off-centre so that I could secure the box closed with a pretty ribbon bow. I think this would make a lovely upcycled gift for mother’s day too (coming up on 6th March) or for a pal’s birthday. If you’ve got a wedding or hen party coming up, you could gather together photos and memories of the happy couple and make them a personalised box of memories. The possibilities for this thrifty gift are endless! And drum-roll please on the 1st Feb 2016 I’ve published my first ever YouTube video (hope you like it, I’m still learning, eek!)! Here’s how to make the memory box, step-by-step:

If you too would like to print our some of your favourite memories, today is your lucky day – Even thought the giveaway had sending, I’ve got a discount code that’ll give you £4 off an order of £8 or more at Cheerz.com so you can get your favourite photos printed up as cute polaroids or funky photobooth strips. Use discount code “CASGRI” for £4 off your first order – enjoy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Some items in this blog post have been gifted to me and the pink links indicate a gifted product, affiliate link or information source. All thoughts and opinions in this post are based on my own experience and I am not responsible for your experience 🙂