The complete guide
How to Choose a First Tooth and Curl Keepsake Box
The problem these boxes solve
Here is how it usually goes. Someone snips a curl of hair during the first proper haircut, wraps it in a tissue, and puts it somewhere safe. Years later, nobody can find it. Or a tooth comes out, lands in a cereal bowl, and gets rinsed down the sink before anyone notices.
The things worth keeping from early childhood are tiny. They weigh almost nothing. They look, to anyone who did not live through the moment, like bits of rubbish. That is exactly why they vanish.
A dedicated keepsake box fixes this with very little effort. It gives the item one obvious home, labels what is inside, and protects it from being crushed or lost. A set of two takes it a step further, because the hair and the tooth get separate compartments and nobody has to rummage.
What you are actually getting
This is a pair of small metal boxes, each roughly 6.1 by 4.1 by 3.1 centimetres. They are made from zinc alloy, which the manufacturer describes as rustless and fadeless. The surface is polished, each box is shaped like an elephant with raised detail on the lid, and the lids are carved "My First Curl" and "My First Tooth".
Inside, both boxes are lined with blue velvet. The product photos show the lids lifting off the bases, so keep each lid with its box. Stated capacity is 313 g, and the whole set weighs about 0.2 kg. The listed colour is silver with an antique finish.
They arrive already assembled. That sounds like a small detail until you have tried to give a gift that needed twenty minutes of fiddling first.
Why the lining matters more than the metal
People tend to judge a keepsake box on how it looks from the outside. Fair enough. But what protects the contents is what is inside.
A baby tooth is enamel. It is hard but brittle, and a bare metal interior gives it a surface to knock against every time the box is moved. Over years, that causes chips. Fine baby hair has a different problem: it catches on any rough edge, and pulling it free breaks the strands.
Velvet solves both. It holds the item more or less where you put it, absorbs small knocks, and will not snag a curl. This is also why the supplier suggests laying the boxes flat rather than standing them on end. Flat storage keeps the contents resting on the lining rather than sliding against the lid.
Who this suits
The obvious buyer is a new parent or grandparent. If you are shopping for a newborn gift for parents, this is the kind of present that sits in a different category to clothes and muslins. It does not get outgrown, and it does not add to the pile of things that need washing.
It also works for a christening, a baptism or a naming day. The manufacturer lists those occasions specifically. The silver tone and engraved pattern suit either a boy or a girl, so you do not need to know the baby's name or wardrobe colour before you buy.
Baby showers are another good fit. At that stage the parents cannot use it yet, but that is part of the appeal. It is a present about the future rather than the next three weeks.
And then there is the family who already has the hair sitting in an envelope somewhere. This gives them an excuse to finally deal with it properly.
How to choose between keepsake options
There are broadly three kinds of baby keepsake storage, and they suit different people.
Large memory boxes hold everything: cards, hospital bands, first shoes, scan photos. They are useful, but small items get buried in them. If you already own one, a pair of small boxes like these actually works inside it as a way of organising the tiniest pieces.
Framed displays with multiple openings look lovely on a wall. The trade off is that they are fixed in size and they put everything on show. Not everyone wants a tooth displayed in the hallway.
Small individual boxes, which is what this set is, keep things contained and private. You can put them in a drawer, a safe, or a larger memory box. They travel well if the family moves. The main limit is capacity: a few teeth and a lock of hair, not a whole collection.
If you want an engraved baby memory box that is small, labelled and ready to give, the third category is where you are looking.
Practical things to get right
Dry everything first. This is the single most important habit. A tooth that goes in slightly damp, or hair that still holds moisture, will sit sealed in a closed box for years. Rinse, let it air dry completely, then store.
Tie the hair. A loose wisp will separate into individual strands eventually. A short length of thread or thin ribbon keeps the curl as a curl.
Write it down. The box tells you what is inside but not when. A tiny slip of paper with a date, folded and tucked under the velvet, costs nothing and answers the question everyone asks later.
Keep them somewhere dry. These are not water resistant. Bathroom cabinets, kitchen windowsills and damp cupboards are the wrong homes. A bedroom drawer or a shelf in a living room is right.
Clean with a dry cloth only. No water, no silver polish, no household sprays. A soft dry wipe handles dust and fingerprints. The velvet does not need washing at all, and a dry soft brush lifts anything that settles on it.
A note on appearance
Metal finishes photograph differently to how they look in a room, and the manufacturer notes there can be slight variation between batches. The overall effect is a polished silver tone with antique shading in the engraved areas. If you are matching it to something else in a nursery, allow for a little difference in shade.
The elephant on the lid is raised rather than printed, so it holds its shape and will not wear off with handling. The pattern is listed as animal print, which in this case means the elephant motif rather than anything spotted or striped.
Giving it as a gift
Because the set is small and light, it posts easily and wraps in minutes. There is no assembly, no batteries, nothing to read first.
If you are giving it at a baby shower, a short note helps. Something explaining that one box is for the first curl and one is for the first tooth saves the parents a moment of puzzling, and it turns the gift into a bit of a conversation. For a christening gift, pairing it with a card that has the date written inside works nicely, because the date ends up stored with the keepsakes.
For older siblings, giving each child their own set avoids the inevitable question about why one of them has a box and the other does not.
The short version
These are two small zinc alloy boxes, about 6.1 by 4.1 by 3.1 cm each, lined with blue velvet and engraved with wording for a first curl and a first tooth. The lids lift off, the metal is described as rustless and fadeless, and the pair weighs around 0.2 kg.
They are not water resistant, so keep them dry. Store them flat. Dry the contents fully before they go in, and clean the outside with a dry cloth only.
As a gift, they suit baby showers, christenings, baptisms, naming days and newborn visits. As a practical item, they do one job properly: they stop the two smallest souvenirs of early childhood from disappearing.