Upcycled gifts for Valentine’s Day

I like to celebrate the people in my life with small tokens of appreciation during holidays like Valentine's Day, but sometimes I don't have a lot of cash in the budget for gift giving. This year I decided to get creative, upcycling some items I had around the house to make special gifts for my Valentines.

The items that I used to make my upcycled gifts included:

-pink, metallic cardboard from a body soap gift set box

-used candle tins (from Aldi)

-used fruit cup (from Panera Bread)

I decided that the piece of pink, metallic cardboard would make a sweet Valentine card and used the Cricut machine at my local library to cut out the heart shape. I'm still learning with the Cricut, but I was able to take a free heart image from Cricut's Design Space and slice out half circles around the border to make it look like a lace/doily card.

I love the way that the heart Valentine turned out, even though it is a harder item to photograph because of the metallic finish on the cardboard! It's the perfect shade of pale pink, and I am glad I was able to repurpose or upcycle this piece of cardboard from a bath set box.

For my next upcycle, I cleaned out candle tins from Aldi to make little gift holders. I used a candle warmer to melt the last of the candle wax and then wiped out the tin. I also used soap and water to wash them out, since I wanted to use some of them to give candy.

I used some gold ribbon to package the candies inside some of the empty tins. In the others, I used tissue paper to give some heart earrings that I made specifically for Valentine's Day.

The design on the candle tins were so cute, I couldn't bear the thought of throwing them out, so I'm glad that I was able to recycle them to make these Valentine's Day gifts.

The last item to repurpose was the plastic fruit cup. I washed this out with soap and water and peeled off the fruit label from the lid. The plastic cup would be a cute way to gift candy, cookies, or even a cupcake! I decided to show a way to repurpose the food cup with a non-edible gift. These adorable llama (or are they alpaca?) socks were actually a gift to me from my sister-in-law, but they look sweet as a cupcake rolled up inside.

You may not have the same items on hand for upcycling your own Valentine's Day gifts, but you can get creative! I think upcycled gifts and packaging are good for the environment, and make your gift stand out. What do you think? What items do you have around the house that you would repurpose for gift giving?

Happy Valentine's Day!