Crafts 101: Recycled Boxes

This beautiful Friday evening we set out on a quest - to create our very own beautifully recycled boxes.

(With the economic crunch, we'd rather not spend on those beautiful yet pricey boxes we can buy at the stores. Plus, we'll be helping save the environment too!)

My little helpers - Tin, Tel, Ice and Kit - all had a goal of their own. Tin wanted a box for her knickknacks, Tel wanted a jewelery box, Ice wanted a box for his photo collection and Kit wanted a dragon, which we'll talk about in a later project.

The only rule is: we can only use whatever we find in the house which we didn't need anymore.


Generally, what you would need for this project are:
1. Boxes - you can use almost any box. For example: tissue box, shoe box, laundry detergent box, boxes of shampoos and soaps, boxes of gadgets and a lot more. Most of these boxes we just throw away anyway but there are some good ones which just need a little prettying up.
2. Paper for the cover - again, you can use almost any paper. Leftover gift wrappers, paper bags, magazines, newspapers, old comics, drawings, photos, etc.
3. Glue or paste - the dry sticky kind is better so that it does not soak through the paper and end up crumpling it.
4. Scissors - if children are doing the project, please make sure adults are with you to supervise.
5. Colors - depending on your design, you may need to color so pencil colors or watercolor may come in handy.

With creative hands at hand, we set to work.

Lavender Delight
1. In this box, we used a Hallmark paper bag which was used to package some postcards we bought recently. Cut the paper bag into strips to make it easier to attach to the box. Here, we kept all the pretty lavender parts and all the white parts. The paper was a thin one, so we needed to apply two layers on the box to hide the original text.

2. We used the white strips from the paper bag as a first layer by spreading glue all over the box. Then we smoothed out the strips over it.

*If your cover is thick enough to hide any original text or design on the box, then one layer is enough.

3. Make sure that a little part of the paper strip overlap on the edges. You can then fold this over to the other side to make the edges look neat and tidy. Let it dry.

4. Once dry, apply another layer of glue or paste. Using the lavender strips, slowly and carefully put it over the glue. Use your palms to smooth over any creases and don't forget to let the strip go over the edge for a nice finish.

*Make sure you do this to all the sides.

Trinket Keeper
1. On a used white folder, we traced these two patterns to create our own box.

*If you want to make your own box, follow this guide: dark pink broken lines are for folding; the blue broken lines are for cutting.

2. After cutting and folding out the pattern, you can design the outer side. You can paste strips of paper on it or as Tel decided, color the box with her favorite colors.

*This is not shown in the photos, but after she finished coloring, Tel lined the inside of the box with cotton from an old jewelery box and sprayed it with cologne to make it smell nice.

Art explosion
1. Ic and Tin decided to cut out colorful pictures from 2004 magazines which they were told to throw away.

2. Put glue at the back of the cut outs.

3. Carefully smooth out the cutouts over your box.

There are many possibilities. It's all up to you to decide.

Hope you have fun like we did!

*You can play around with this by pasting your favorite pictures all over the box. You can choose words which you like as Tin did. You can compose messages using different word cutouts. You can color it or paste flowers, shells or other decorative items on the cover.