I had this wood box laid around for years lost in the attic. I tried to make something out of it a few times but never succeeded. A few weeks back, I found the box once again and decided that this was the time to turn it into something beautiful. My original plan was to use plastic straws to give a new purpose to them while helping the planet. Well, that plan went quickly down the toilet.

I found on Pinterest that you can do some cute flowers out of straws using double-faced tape. I even went to the trouble of doing small clay balls to be the centre of the flowers and having the straw going around it. Until here, everything was working fine once I started painting them, everything went wrong. The double-faced tape wasn’t sticky enough to hold the straw in place, so it started to unroll. But I wasn’t going to give up yet. I thought about fixing the flowers once it was time to attach them to the box. I was going to use my hot glue gun, and that would secure them in place and prevent them to unroll. After I finished spray painting them, the paint started to chip. At this point, I realised that I had to ditch this idea. The whole project was already taking too long, and to try to save the plastic flowers would take me even longer, and I wasn’t sure it would work out.

So I decided to take a different route. I was determined to have some flowers on the top, and the quickest ones to make are with paper. I’m still happy with the way it turned out, even though it saddens me that I didn’t get to give a new use for those plastic straws. But enough with the story, time to start crafting!

Supplies:

Wood Box
Wood Paint
Paint Brush
Balsa Wood
Ruler
Pencil
Paper (135g)
Wood/White Glue
Spray Paint
Hot Glue Gun
Sandpaper

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Step 1. Remove all screws, the lock, and the hinges. Set them aside and start sanding down both pieces of the box. Try to leave the surface as smooth as possible and remove any sharp edges the box might have. Since my box was previously painted, I also tried to remove as much of the paint as I could so the new one would stick better to the box.

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Step 2. First off, don’t be a fool like me, and before you start painting anything, do all the changes to the box that you need to do. I wanted to do a small trim around the lid of the box with balsa wood. I cut out 2 pieces of wood 16cm by 1cm and another 2 with 11cm by 1cm. The only balsa I had was 3mm thick, so I cut out a total of 8 pieces to glue them together to have a higher trim.

Note: I decided to do the trim around the lid to create an enclosed space to add the paper flowers without it seems they were out of place.

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Step 2.1. Once you have glued the pieces together in pares, sand them down to remove any splits and level all the sides, since some might not fit perfectly together.

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Step 2.2. Apply some wood glue on the lid and place the balsa. The best part about using wood glue is that you can still move it around and adjust the pieces if you need to. When they are all in the right position, apply some weight on them or stack a few books on top. After a few minutes, when the glue has started to dry, apply a thick coat of glue on the connections between all the pieces. Don’t be scared to use too much glue because when it dries out, it goes becomes transparent. Any small crack where the pieces don’t align perfectly, use the glue to mend it. And let it dry for 24 hours.

Step 2.3. And now comes the reason why you should always do the alterations you want before starting to paint: time to sand the new pieces and the box. The idea is to level the lid with the new balsa parts for them to become one, so there aren’t any visible lines that separate both pieces.

Step 3. Use a wet cloth to remove all the dirt and dust from sanding. Don’t forget the corners and be thorough while doing this process. If any dust is left behind the paint might not stick as well as it should. Just have some patience.

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Step 4. Now is time to start painting. I decided to use a dark purple to hide all the pink that I had previously painted – this colour is a bitch, I worked with this pink before and it’s very hard to get rid of it. Depending on the colour, you might need to do more or fewer layers of paint. I did about four layers with 4 hours breaks between them. Keep in mind to let it dry according to how the manufacturing company advises you to.

Step 5. While you wait for the paint to dry you can move on to other parts of the project. Since I used such a dark colour I didn’t want to add any other others, so I went with white for all the details including the flowers. I used some spray paint for the top of the screws, the lock and the hinges on both sides. To help paint the screws, you can punch them through a piece of cardboard so it will keep them in place.

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Step 6. Time to start working on the flowers. I did a basic petal shape in two different sizes. To draw one of the petals start with a drop shape and on the rounded side draw a nib. If you want to make sure the petals are symmetrical you can fold them lengthwise, and cut half of the shape. My advice is to first draw the entire petal and then folded in half and trim any excess paper. For the middle of the flower, draw the same shape even smaller three times all connecting each other.

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Step 6.1. For each flower, I use five petals in two different sizes and a middle piece. Fold in half all the petals and with the help of a pencil curve the edges of the petals to give them movement. Don’t worry if not every single one looks perfect you can always go back and change it. This is a way to shape the paper without leaving any marks, but you can flatten or curl it even more afterward.

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Step 6.2. Glue five petals together slightly overlaying each other. Repand the same process for the remain petals. And now glue the three layers together: the big petals, the smaller ones, and then the centre part. Test out the placement of each flower on the box and cover any empty space with leaves. For that cut the most basic leaf shape you can think of, fold it in half, and curl one of the edges. Glue the leaves to the flowers keeping in mind to align with the centre of the flower so it doesn’t look unreal. You can stick the leaf out as much as you like as long as it’s aligned with the centre of the flower.

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Step 7. Now that everything you need for the box is ready and painted, reassemble the box again. Screw the lock and the hinges and glue the flowers with a hot glue gun. Remember to be careful about the way the box open. My hinges open 180º, so I had to place the flower closer to the front of the box so they wouldn’t be crushed when the box was fully open.

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And it’s done!! This projects only takes a lot of time while you are painting the box since it needs to dry before the next layer. The rest is very simple and basic crafting. I had a great time reusing this box and giving it a new purpose. I don’t know if I’m going to make a series out of this but if I do any other makeover you will find it here on the blog.