Moonie DIY Galentine's Day Gift Boxes
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While Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, the people I love most to craft for this time of the year are my best gal pals! So for inviting all my favorite ladies to my Anime Karaoke Birthday Party last year, I used it as the perfect excuse to showered them with DIY gifts and costume accessories while also asking them to dress up for my birthday in these custom Sailor Scout Galentine's Day Gift Boxes!
For those who are not Moonies, the Sailor Scouts are the best friends and allies of Sailor Moon, the main character in one of my favorite animes! She also happened to be the character I was dressing up as for my party, so my besties were invited based on which scout I thought suited them best. In addition to the sailor scouts, I also had to include my two favorite cats from the series, Luna and Artemis! Each box’s contents was designed to be the colors and styles of my girl’s respective scout or cat, with each lady being gifted a customly crafted box but with the same general stuff inside.
I wanted these boxes to be a mix of Galentine’s gifts I love to make and fun accessories to wear and use at my birthday party, so they turned into a plethora of sweets, candles, and accessories! For enjoying seltzers at the party, each box contained either a Heart or Moon Patterned Koozie already holding a seltzer along with Almond Chocolate Pocky, a fun Asian treat whose gold box made me think of each scout’s golden tiara! As a moon kingdom themed gift, I went back to creating new candles and created these gorgeous Gold Foil Crescent Moon Candles for gracing their office desks or bathroom countertops, all scented lavender for a scent to help you sleep at night. As it wouldn’t really be a Galentines gift without a fun card, I made each box its own Sailor Scout Petal Fold Card that unfolded into a heart shaped poem and party invitation! In the envelope, they found their character card along with homemade earrings and either a pin-on bow or ear headband to start their party outfits!
I also used these boxes as an opportunity to try out some new crafting mediums, mainly polymer clay for making earrings and simple sewing to create the cute costume bows that topped each box. While the cat ear headbands were a bit harder to make, the simple earrings and bows were perfect starter projects to get into these areas and I loved being able to make different accessories for each box while getting some beginners practice! That being said, I also included some options for buying comparable items on Etsy where I could for these two options, because sometimes you don’t have time to DIY everything!
These gift boxes were a fun and unique addition to my various Valentine’s and Galentine’s Projects as well as the gift boxes and bags I’ve made for my past parties and trips and such a fun way to craft for some of my favorite people! See the supplies I used and how I packed up my boxes below, I hope they inspire your next gifts to your best girlfriends!
SUPPLIES
GIFT BOXES & PACKAGING SUPPLIES
Gift Box: For housing all these DIY gifts, I used some small square Priority mail boxes because I intended to mail them to my ladies, only to end up driving them there myself! The inside dimensions of these gift boxes was 7” x 7” x 6” , so I linked my favorite sleek white boxes from Amazon that could be used for giving in person and look way prettier too!
Bubble Wrap Bags: for protecting your candles while they are in the boxes. These are optional, but they came with my candle jars so I used them for extra padding.
Crinkle Paper: for putting in the bottom of the gift box and packing around items. I used a mix of white crinkle paper and some gold metallic shred that I had already, but this was just to add some more pizazz!
Packing Tape: for building the gift boxes and sealing them closed when you are done packing them with presents!
GIFT BOX CONTENTS
Crescent Moon Candles: first up in my DIY gifts were these gorgeous candles which I created with embedded gold foiled crescent moons, the perfect spa gift from the moon kingdom! This tutorial will teach you how to make your own, but if you don’t have time to create these cuties, any candle that is a similar size would work! I made most of them with white wax as the base to match the white tops of the scouts and Artemis’ fur, with the exception of the candle for my Luna box being black to match her fur.
Heart and Moon Patterned Koozies: for holding the seltzer in the gift box as well as their drinks at my birthday party, each box housed a patterned koozie that color coordinated with each character’s colors based on the HTV I had. Below you can see what I used for each character, but you can access the cut files and see all the details of how to make these koozies in this tutorial! Like the candles, the koozie blanks I used for this project were mostly white, with one black koozie for the Luna box.
Mercury & Venus - blue foil hearts
Mars - red foil hearts
Jupiter - green foil hearts
Luna - purple foil crescent moons
Artemis - glitter gold crescent moons
Polymer Clay Earrings: to start accessorizing their outfits, each box included a set of polymer earring that I made based on what each character wears in the series. I found this polymer clay jewelry kit which was perfect for creating the simple earrings I needed, with the addition of this silicone rose and flower mold to craft Sailor Jupiter’s earrings. It was also a great find because it contained all the jewelry hardware and packaging I needed too! Below I’ve given the general style of each set for each character and linked some pretty inspired pieces from Etsy creators that would be lovely options to buy for those who aren’t into starting their own polymer clay journey just yet!
Mercury - Blue Button Earrings
Venus - Orange Button Earrings
Mars - Red Dangling Star Earrings
Jupiter - Pink Roses
Luna - White Moon Dangling Earrings
Artemis - Black Moon Dangling Earrings
I also found some super cute Luna and Artemis Cat Earrings that would be perfect substitutions to moon earrings, so I’ve included them too!
Sailor Scout Glamour Bows: to top the presents and valentine in each of the Sailor Scout boxes, I sewed a bow for each box based on the front bows of each scout. I used this nifty Glamour Bow Pattern to make them, but I printed and sewed the bows at 75% their original size to make them fit in the boxes nicely. To ornament each bow and make them closer to each character’s costume, I made each a glitter resin button using a Silicone Cake Pop Pan and some extra resin supplies I had around. The color combinations I used were:
Mercury - Light Blue Bow with Dark Blue Glitter Gem
Venus - Dark Blue Bow with Orange Glitter Gem
Mars - Purple Bow with Red Glitter Gem
Jupiter - Pink Bow with Green Glitter Gem
For those looking to buy rather than DIY their bows, my two favorites are these Satin Glamour Bows and these Button Sailor Scout Bows, with the first giving a bunch of colors but no center gems and the second being not quite as stiff and pretty as the first bows, but with coordinating center buttons like my bows have!
Cat Ear Headbands: for the Luna and Artemis boxes, I choose to go with making cat ear headbands out of velvet and felt using this pattern I found on Etsy, but I’ll admit that I had a tougher time making these than the bows! The Artemis ears were made with white fur fabric and the Luna ears were made with black like the cat character themselves, but instead of both sets of ears to be pink on the inside, I opted for purple velvet for the Luna ears to better match the preference of my friend receiving the box. While I love my headbands, I’d recommend buying them for affordability and because making them took forever for me, so I linked ones where you can buy both a set of white and black ears from Amazon above!
Sailor Scout Galentine’s Cards: for inviting my girls and revealing which character they were, I created custom petal fold cards based on each character’s outfit, complete with either a Sailor Scout or cat themed poem to invite them to my party and show them a little love! I’ve linked the tutorial above, where you can access the cut files you need and see both the color combinations I used for each card and the tutorial for creating your own.
Pocky or other Asian Inspired Treats: what’s a Galentine’s box without a little something sweet? Since my party and these boxes were Asian inspired, I had to go with my favorite treat, Pocky! While there are oodles of flavors and colors to choose from, I chose Almond Chocolate Pocky because their boxes were gold, just like the sailor scout tiaras!
Canned Seltzers: for displaying the patterned koozies and giving each girl a drink to toast with upon opening their box!
SUPPLIES LIST:
[per gift box]
GIFT BOXES & PACKAGING SUPPLIES
Gift Box x 1
Crinkle Paper
Bubble Bag (optional) x1
Packing Tape
GIFT BOX CONTENTS
Crescent Moon Candle x1
Patterned Koozie x1
Polymer Clay Character Earrings x1
Glamour Bow or Cat Ear Headband x1
Galentines Card x1
Canned Seltzer x1
Pocky x1
GIFT BOX PACKING
1. Start by lining the bottom of your gift box with crinkle paper in an even layer, then place your seltzer filled koozie and bagged candle side by side on top of the paper. Above the candle, place the earrings in their packaging, then tuck the Pocky box into the left side of the koozie as shown in the photo.
2. Top the earrings with extra crinkle paper to make the contents of the box at all about the same height. Place the Galentines Card over these gifts, then top with the appropriate Sailor Scout Bow. Seal up your box and it's ready to give to your favorite friends!
I can’t wait to craft more fun themed gift boxes for my girls in the future and these were certainly my favorite way to invite my friend’s to my parties so far, along with indulging in all the crafting my heart could desire! I hope they inspire you to create your own unique gifts for your best ladies!