With These Hands - Valentine's Day

Should I apologise again for my lack of posts? Probably not, you all know how slack I am by now. My weekend with mum was great and I actually took photos, so I will post them soon.

First though, I managed to finish my 'With These Hands - Valentine's Day' project last night and I thought I'd share it with you. It's a gift I will be giving to SJ tonight so he has strict instructions not to come anywhere near the blog until after then!



I took my inspiration from this post on DIY candy dispensers (which I discovered through Pinterest) and changed things up a little to make my very own Valentines Day lolly dispenser...well not my own, SJ's I guess.

Here's what I used:

• plastic cups (cost $2 from the Reject Shop)
• Jaffas (cost $2.50 on special from Woolworths)
• red bow (cost $1 from Reject Shop)
• red candle tray thingy (cost $1.50 from Reject Shop)
• red spotty paper, glue, scissors and sticky ribbon came from my craft box.

I got lucky in finding this little red glass candle thingy, it is just the right size for this project. Chances are unless you head to the Reject Shop you won't find one yourself. The original project used an upturned coloured plastic cup covered with a doily, but anything the clear plastic cups will fit onto should be fine. You'll see.

I cut holes in my cups. Again, the original post uses a fancy hold puncher that I didn't have, so I just cut rectangular doorways. It's very hard to tell in the picture but one of them is deeper (by one of the grooves) than the other, when stacked they line up almost perfectly (cutting was hard, okay!).

I have also cute out a hole in the top of the left cup (which will be the under-cup) with the intention that my lolly dispenser will then become refillable without having to squish lollies back up the doorway.

Next step was gluing the base cup onto the...base? I turned the candle thingy upside down and it was a perfect fit (I tried it out in the shop actually). This means my lollies can roll out from a flat surface inside (the other way up would have trapped them).

Final step, I decorated the top cup and put it on top. It was a bit of a pain to decorate (being sort of cone shaped) which is why the sticky ribbon I used is a bit crooked. No matter, it looks good enough to me!

This is what it looks like with the door closed. The lollies are safe...for now.

And here they are open. They don't roll out too quickly, I may have jammed more in there than was really necessary, but it works well enough.

I filled it with Jaffas because they're SJ's favourite, they're round and they're red. I don't think I needed anymore reasons than that. Anything round would work though, just make sure the whole is about 1.5x the size of your lollies, or you'll have to shake it like one of those silly puzzles to get them out.

Dah Dah (said with Jazz hands) my Valentines Day lolly dispenser. All for a grand total of $7 (with a few miscellaneous bits and pieces) perfect for those who think Valentine's Day is a commercialism trap.

Since we were a bit late with deciding to even start this project, no one else has posted their creations yet, though I think Rhiannon will tonight. She and I will be announcing the next week's theme tomorrow so feel free to join in for week two.