Life as a LEO Wife

Welcome to this week’s Designing Devotion where I’ll give you a tutorial on how to make a DIY Dollar Store Valentine’s sign, followed by a devotional. The sign that we’ll be making is perfect in a tiered tray or a vignette. It’s small so you can add other things around it. If you’d like to skip to the devotional, on the topic of loving your fellow man, click here.

To make the Valentine’s sign you need:

• small shadow box frame from Dollar Tree (they have several styles; it doesn’t matter which one.)
• heart shaped marble-type filler
• Mod Podge (I used glossy since the glass is shiny, but if you only have matte, that’s fine.)
• foam brush
• cardstock image, clip art, sticker, etc. Something to place on the front of the glass. The DT shadow boxes come with words on the glass that need to be covered. I used an image in an old pack of 12×12 cardstock from Michael’s. Here’s a Valentine’s pack from Amazon. At Dollar Tree they have V-day stickers in the vinyl section that are perfect.
• scissors
• piece of white cardstock, paper, or white paint
• 1.5″ wired ribbon

Dismantle the frame.

The back of the frame has a piece of craft paper over the back and the tabs that keep it closed. Peel that paper off. You can now see the back. There are two tabs (that’s how many mine had) keeping the back on. Lift those up, and remove the wood-ish backing thing. Yes, those are the words by which they are called. I looked it up😉.

• 

• 

• 

Now take out the image inside. You can see the sequins in the shadow box. Mine are orange, and I thought, “Wow, this would be perfect to keep and use at Halloween!” If you’d like to keep yours, get a small container and shake the sequins in to it. Carefully, don’t spill them. I was so careful, and I got every single one into the container. Boom! Yes!!

Remove the orange ribbon from the shadow box by pulling it straight up. If you need to, pull the staples out, but mine came off very easily. Put the back of the frame aside to attach your image onto the front of the glass. OH, but make sure your container is closed. And make sure you move the sequin container away, not at the edge of your work space.

Cover the image or words on the glass.

There are several different versions of these small shadow box frames at Dollar Tree. The one I was working with had the word “YUM” on it. Since this is a Valentine’s sign, yum doesn’t work. However, you can’t even scrape it off the glass, so you have to cover it. First, clean the front and back of the glass with Windex to have a blank slate to work with.

Decide what you’d like to put over the word, and cut it to fit. Put the image over it on the front of the glass, not inside the frame. If it’s inside you will still see the original word. Brush Mod Podge on the back of the image you’re adding to the Valentine’s sign. Carefully place it evenly over the “YUM.” Smooth out any bumps, while avoiding extra Mod Podge oozing onto the frame. Use a paper towel and Windex to wipe down the places where it comes out.

• 

• 

Allow that to set about ten minutes or so. Load up some more Mod Podge on your foam brush, and brush it over the top of the image you just added. This will keep it in place and seal it there. It will be a little glossy, so it blends with the frame on your Valentine’s sign. You can see below that I still had the orange ribbon on. Definitely take it off as I said above. It’s easier that way.

Put it all back together again.

When you put the Valentine’s sign back together, you don’t want to put that space themed paper right back in. You can flip it over if you have nothing else, but you can still see the dark colors. Use the original paper and cut a piece of white cardstock or paper to size. If you don’t have any, you can paint the inside of the back of the sign white.

If you had to use paint, put it aside to dry. With the Valentine’s sign face down, take some of the red heart marbles and put them in the front, where the sequins were before. You can put as many or as few as you’d like. I opened and closed it a few times to get the number of marbles that looked the best before I was finished.

Put the white paper on top of the marbles, followed by the back. Push the tabs down to keep your Valentine’s sign closed.

Add a bow to your Valentine’s sign.

I thought about putting a pink ribbon to hang it from, like the original orange, but I didn’t want to hang it. It looked a little plain with no ribbon, so I decided to add a bow. I used a sheer pink 1.5″ wired ribbon. Make a bow just like you would for your hair or shoe. Cut the ends into a “V” and glue it to the top of the Valentine’s sign. And that’s it! How easy was that?!

You can add this decoration to your new family Valentine’s dinner! Click the link for the tutorial on that, and to print your free Valentine’s dinner menu printable. Following the devotional you will find our recent posts on Valentine’s decoration ideas and tutorials.

Devotional: Love others as yourself.

With Valentine’s Day in a few days, you can find all kinds of “love you” cards, chocolates, stuffed animals, you get the picture. We all know that we are supposed to love our spouses, children, and other family and friends. That’s pretty easy; well at least most of the time anyway.

The hard part is the other side of the coin. Jesus told us that the greatest commandment is to love others as ourselves. In fact He tells us in Matthew 5:43-44 ESV, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” You’re probably thinking, “That’s a tall order, especially in these modern times!” Yes it definitely is.

We all struggle with trying to live in the manner that Jesus did on earth. Our human nature wants to satisfy our own needs and desires. Satan has everyone wanting to do that. “Hey you do you babe!”, “YOLO,” and all the thoughts that go down that rabbit hole. We have to fight those urges daily.

Love your enemies…

Jesus

Once you are saved though, hatred is no longer part of you. John tells us in 1 John 4:20, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Ouch, that stings us a bit doesn’t it?

When we are born again we are born with the love of the Holy Spirit living inside us. If we have negative feelings welling up within us, we have the power to stop those in their tracks. Inside us lives the Spirit that can overcome anything in this world. We might be angry at times, but once He’s inside us, we can’t truly hate. So I give you a mission leading up to Valentine’s Day. Push away all the hurt and anger that exists in us and follow Jesus’s command. Kick the devil out of your way, and begin showing and sharing the love that was born in you when you were saved. I know it’s in you, because if God abides in you so does His unending love.

If you haven’t asked Jesus into your heart, it’s so easy to do and it’s life changing. If you believe that Jesus was God in flesh, died on the cross, and was raised three days later, tell that to God. Ask Him to free and forgive you of your sins, and to come into your heart. That’s it. It’s really that simple. Seek Him, He’s waiting on you. Then you can spread the love you’ve found with the world.

Alright, wifers! We have completed our Valentine’s sign and our devotional on loving our fellow man. I really enjoyed making this project. It looks so cut in my living room vignette, and I’m thinking of other ways to use the little shadow boxes. You’ll be the first to know when I’ve settled on an idea.

I hope you have enjoyed our time together today. Please comment below and definitely share pictures of your project with us here and on social media. Use the links below to share on the app you’d like. Sign up using the email box on the right so you never miss a post. Enter your email and you will receive an email when a new post is uploaded. You will never receive junk mail and I will never share your address. Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!!