Living abroad, I’ve created my share of care packages to send home. Who doesn’t love receiving snail mail? A package can brighten anyone’s day, but a beautiful package can leave the intended receiver beaming for weeks. My brother-in-law is currently living abroad for a couple of years so we decided to ship him some of his favorite Danish goodies in a little suitcase from the dollar store. Hopefully, your dollar store has a similar version. If not, you can use a simple cardboard box and attach the airmail PDF attached as decoration.

Materials:

suitcase, acrylic paint, angled paintbrush, scissors, care package goodies, masking tape

Step 1: Start by creating the air mail border on the box. I free-styled it with an angled paintbrush so that all you need is one stroke (like applying nail polish!). I started with the white and measured it every .5″ around.

Step 2: I added another coat of white paint.

Step 3: Now go in and add the blue on top to every other white strip. To get a super clean air mail effect, use the masking tape to create the lines and then peel them off.

Step 4: Add another coat of blue paint.

Step 5: Add in the care package goodies. I bought mini sized candy from Haribo, bouncy balls, a Rubiks cube keychain, a little notebook, a small package of potato chips, and licorice (the Danes’ favorite!).

Step 6: Cut out the air mail label (free PDF here) and apply with tape to the top of the box.

Step 7: Add on some cute stamps and send it on its way. I checked with the Danish Post to see if it was ok to send and they said it was, so hopefully it is where you are too.

Go make someone’s day!