His and Hers Valentine's Swag

Oh my goodness, what's a girl gotta do to get a little creative time???  I've been creating this swag in my mind for weeks.  I'm happy to say I finally have something to show for it.  And I am giddy with how it turned out.  Hope you will be too...

I got these little white buckets in the $1 aisle at Target last year.  Knew I could do something with them, but not sure what.  Eventually the idea of some sort of swag or advent thing came to mind.  But advent calendars are so overdone... by myself included!  Plus, I only had 7 of them.  As I began decorating them though I had an a-ha moment - I could make his and hers buckets!

Loving the mustache craze right now - so I knew I had to put those on the boys' buckets (3 boys - my 2 sons and my hubby).  But for girls it took a while to come up with something gender-specific.  I was playing around with cupcake liners along the inside of the buckets when it occurred to me that I could use the liners as skirts on the BOTTOMS of the buckets.  So clever am I, no? ;) So I made 3 of those too (one for each daughter, and myself).

Materials:
felt stickers (on sale right now at Hobby Lobby - red heart shapes)
felt heart outlines (not stickers, I just glued them on)
miniature buckets (I've seen them at various places!!! and if you can't find a color conducive to V-Day, mod podge them or spray paint them!)
cupcake liners
sharpie (for the stache)
tissue paper
ribbon

Really the trickiest part of this little project was tying on the buckets - getting them evenly spaced and to all face forward was tedious.  But I'll take you through the previous steps as well.

First I stuck my heart-shaped velvet stickers and outlines on... front and center of each bucket.  Then I used double stick tape to attach a cupcake liner to the bottom of the girly ones.  And I took a marker to the boy ones and drew on various versions of mustaches (below the felt hearts).  Next I tied the buckets to one long piece of ribbon.  Double tie each one to be sure it stays in place!  Last I stuffed each bucket with some natural-colored tissue paper.  This will hide whatever goody I put in there on Valentine's Eve. ;)

I added a few extra strands of ribbon above my swag, and tied on a few scraps at the end.  To take the gender specificity a but further I tied a short piece of black tulle to either side of the boy buckets (they look kinda like bow ties to me - would be cute tied to the top, too), and a pink ribbon/white ric rac duo to the top of each of the girl buckets.  Perfectly frilly and handsome - each one!

Enjoy!!!

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