Easy Valentine Treats for the Classroom in SRM Tubes

I am so thrilled to be sharing an idea for you and your kiddos for their Valentine’s Day classroom exchange. You should know that I am totally one of those people that like to find ways to use products in ways other than their intended purpose and today’s inspiration will be no different.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, I decided to make things easy on myself and put some of the gorgeous pieces from the Little Yellow Bicycle: Just Because: Paper Crafting Kit to use to embellish a set of lightweight clear plastic tubes from SRM Press.

These tubes are BRILLIANT for packaging small candy treats and made the job of putting together sugary sweet Valentine’s for my daughter’s classmates super simple.

 What I love most about these tubes is that you can decorate them as simple or over the top as you wish and whichever way you choose they look absolutely adorable and like you fussed for hours over them. They are about 1” in diameter leaving you with tons of options for what treat to fill them with. I’ve seen yogurt covered raisins, cinnamon hearts, tart candies, chocolate coated candies, nuts, sunflower seeds, coins, messages in a bottle, rolled up stickers, etc.

To decorate them, I started simple by adding either a vellum tape strip or a pre-scored printed cardstock strip (from the Paper Crafting Kit) along the bottom of each tube. These add a visually substantial embellishment around the base of the tube and acts to ground whatever other embellishing you’re doing. Each vellum strip &/or pre-scored printed cardstock will wrap around three tubes, so you can really stretch the mileage from the set making them perfect when creating multiples!

When using the shapes from the Paper Crafting Kit, don’t feel limited by pieces that aren’t quite the right color because you can always use the reverse side that is white. Also, don’t overlook a piece that is pre-printed with a word or image that may not convey your feelings because it can also be layered with additional pieces to cover. I did exactly that using the light blue circle piece pre-printed with the word “happy”. You’ll also notice that the banner pieces are much narrower than they come in the kit. I simply cut ¼” to ½” strip off of each side so they would look more balance for the size of my tubes.

Some other tips:

• It’s a good idea to alternate the height at which you place your layered embellishments so they don’t all get tangled together at the top.
• Glue dots work best for adhering to the plastic tube. No worrying about glue drying or sticky fingers leaving marks on the tubes.
• If you like a little extra bulk to your layers add in the small flowers and hearts from the package of Chipboard Shapes.
• Use stickers from the Fresh Verse sticker sheet to add simple phrases. You can quickly turn them into a cute banner-like sticker by cutting a triangle-shaped notch in the right edge of the sticker.
• Dust the sticky portion of any stickers that overhang with baby powder so they don’t inadvertently stick to anything else.
• Consider using a tube of a different size for teachers and school administrators. Larger tubes work rather well for using the larger bows in the crafting kit.
• Don’t have a need for classroom Valentine’s? No worries. You can adapt this idea for any theme using a Paper Crafting Kit from any of the other Little Yellow Bicycle collections.
• Don’t want to use tubes? That’s okay, you can follow the same concept using glassine bags or cellophane bags too!

Happy Crafting!