guest post, valentine’s style: Maria Rainier

Category: guest bloggers | February 13th, 2011

hello!! ok…so it’s T minus one day until valentine’s day. but i wanted to share this cute (last minute, and easy) valentine’s craft that Maria has put together! Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education where recently she’s been researching the highest paying degrees versus the lowest paying degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

A Valentine’s Message in a Bottle
message in a bottle

Feel like being sentimental this Valentine’s Day without going the box of chocolates and store-bought card route?  Here’s a pretty, creative, and a bit cheesy alternative to the usual blah-blah and a sure way to get your Valentine’s attention.

Materials
-Empty, clear wine bottle and cork
-Paper for printing
-Parchment paper
-Double-sided tape
-Pen
-Thin ribbon
-Chocolate morsels or small Valentine’s Day candies
-Optional: Twine
-Optional: small sea shells and beach sand

Directions
1. Go online and Google “Chateau” or something indicative of a European vineyard.  Copy/paste the picture onto a Microsoft Word document (or some other word processing tool).  Crop and shrink to be 3” x 5” (W x H), depending on the dimensions of your wine bottle.  Edit it as you like.

2. Choose a fancy text and input basic wine information like the name of the wine (it’s yours to make up! I did “San Valentino,” which is Italian for Saint Valentine), the type of wine (white, red), the year (2011), and the like.  Since I have a soft spot for Italy, I used the following text:

San Valentino (name of the wine)
Vernatsh
(type of wine)
2011
(year)
Sud Tirol, Italia
(where it was made)
750 ml  Alc 14%

3. Center the text and image across the document, making sure all the text fits on the picture.  Print out the document.

4. If all of this editing looks like too much work, you can always print out the picture and write the wine information with a pen in your prettiest script.

5. Either remove the old label from the wine or make sure your printout covers the old one entirely.  Apply double-sided tape to your printout and adhere to the bottle.

6. Remember the parchment paper?  Feel free to add a feel of “been across the sea” to it by spilling some watered down coffee on it.  When it’s dry, write a personal message to your valentine in ink.  A little bit of a bleeding effect with the ink is cool but make sure it’s legible.

7. Roll up your message and tie it with a ribbon.  You might want to apply a little bit of tape on one side of the rolled up message (the side that will face the cork in the bottle, not the bottom of it) so your valentine will be able to easily retrieve it.
message

8. Fill the bottom of the empty wine bottle with chocolate morsels or some sort of small candies.
bottle

9. Insert your rolled up message, pinning the ribbon down so it won’t be squished upward when it gets inside.
bottle2

10. Cork the bottle!

Note: Another (arguably more aesthetic) idea is to fill the bottle with a layer of beach sand and very small sea shells instead of chocolate.  Don’t do both, though, unless the candies are wrapped!  Tie off your message not with a ribbon but with a bit of twine or something natural and neutrally colored.  This is a more typical message in a bottle that looks like it’s come across some water.

thanks for sharing this Maria!!! all those last minute people out there…this will save you. :) hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and get ready for lots of love tomorrow!!

peace and love
xox