The Romantic.com

With Art

I LOPOVOPOE YOPO

submitted by: A. P.

 

My fiance and I were in a long-distance relationship for five years, and spent lots of money on phone bills and for trips.  So, we often tried to be creative with presents, making them instead of getting expensive things which we didn’t have money for anyway.

One year I made him an “I Love You” box.  I went online and found translations for those words in hundreds of languages. I saved these onto a word processor file, and picked out the ones I liked best.

Some of these had special meaning: some Indian languages because I am Indian. Spanish and Italian because we met on a trip to those countries, and some silly ones like pig latin and other made-up languages.

I picked a special, beautiful font for each one, and printed them out on fancy paper.  Then I bought some supplies at crafts store: a box, tissue paper, and velvet fabric. His favorite color is forest green, so I bought the velvet and paper in these colors. I lined the box with the velvet and decorated the outside with the translations and tissue paper,  making it sort of a decoupage box.

I tried not to make it too “girly” since I wanted him to be able to display it!  I filled the inside with slips of paper saying things I loved about him.  I don’t know if I could call the box great art–it is quite simple–but I loved working on it, and he still uses it. I just wanted him to have a fun reminder of my feelings for him, yet something that was practical enough for him to use as well so he could look at it everyday!

One of our favorite translations was “Op.”  I love you = I lopovopoe yopo.  We still tell each other that when we’re in a silly mood!