Elena Cherepnina

The box is very useful thing, because you can store all kinds of household items in it: jewelry, threads, needles, buttons, keys, business cards, etc. Probably, every home has such a product. A beautifully designed stylish box can also successfully highlight the style of a room, living room or bedroom and become an integral part of the interior.

A personally decorated box will be a wonderful gift for a friend, colleague or relatives for a birthday or wedding, and the decorating process itself can later turn into an exciting hobby.

It is also worth noting that such a hobby perfectly develops imagination, memory and has a positive effect on the nervous system. If you have an old wooden box at home that has long lost its former appeal, do not rush to throw it in the trash, because even a person who has never decorated before can stylishly decorate the thing with their own hands.

Preparation

Before you start decorating a wooden box, you need to prepare it for this. So, if there are remnants of paint, varnish, glue or paints on the outside walls, clean them so that the surface of the material is as even and smooth as possible. If the surface is not too smooth, it can be sanded.

After this, the outer surface should be degreased so that the applied new material remains firmly in place. This can be done by wiping the chest with a napkin soaked in alcohol or vodka. After this, let the product dry for 10-12 hours or dry it with a hairdryer.

Decoration

There are a huge number of options for decorating boxes. We offer for your consideration the most popular and interesting of them, and you can supplement and modify them, guided by your own imagination.

Painting with acrylic paints

Of course, you are unlikely to be able to create a brilliant masterpiece with your own hands on the first try, since this type of art requires dexterity and certain skills.

But if you try, the result will certainly impress not only you, but also your loved ones.

We will need:

• acrylic paints for decoration;
• primer for acrylic paints;
• thin pattern brush, flat synthetic brush;
• pencil, eraser, palette;
• masking tape.

First you need to prepare a sketch. The simpler the drawing, the easier it will be for you to apply paint. You can come up with something yourself, or you can look for interesting drawings on the Internet or books.

First, we sketch a sketch on a sheet of paper, focusing on the dimensions of the box. For ease of use, repeating elements can be cut out of hard paper and subsequently applied to the walls and lid of the product.

We carefully treat the leveled surface with primer for acrylic paints and let it dry thoroughly. After this, we proceed directly to painting. First, we cover the surface of the box with the base, dry it, and only then apply a drawing to it using templates. Now, very carefully, using special thin brushes, paint the picture.

If you suddenly make a mistake during your work (and this happens even to professionals), don’t be upset.

Acrylic paints have a covering effect, so you can apply a new layer of the desired paint over the blot without any damage to the pattern.

Advice. If you doubt your abilities, before applying the pattern to the box, practice on another surface - for example, on a piece of paper.

The finished painted box needs to be thoroughly dried. If you are impressed with the result and you want to make the decor durable, you can coat it with furniture varnish.

Kanzashi

Kanzashi (or kanzashi) is japanese art hair decorations It is based on the ability to fold flower petals from ribbons and pieces of fabric and glue them to the base. Today, the kanzashi technique is used all over the world to decorate interior elements, decorative pillows, curtains, women's handbags, and jewelry boxes.

Ribbons can be used to decorate not only a wooden box, but also a box made of any other material - plastic, glass, clay, etc. Boxes decorated with kanzashi look very rich, impressive and elegant.

We will need:

First of all, you should cover the box - the very basis of the craft - with fabric or ribbons. To do this, generously lubricate the workpiece with glue and glue the fabric.

While the base dries, we begin preparing the decoration. From ribbons and pieces of fabric you can make not only flowers, but petals, miniature fruits, etc. You can decorate them in any way you like, using beads, buttons or rhinestones. Larger ribbon crafts should be glued to the lid, and smaller ones - to the sides of the box.

It is worth noting that it is best to decorate the box with ribbons made of expensive fabrics - satin, velvet, silk, as these materials look the most elegant and rich. But you shouldn’t buy cuttings specifically for these purposes - you can use scraps left over after sewing clothes, curtains or curtains.

If you want to decorate a wedding box (for money or rings), you can use the following idea. Cover the body with white or ivory satin, and decorate the lid with pink lilies or roses and white or light green ribbons.

Marine theme

Surely, while relaxing on sea ​​coast, you have repeatedly met merchants offering various souvenirs made from natural materials. Among such crafts, as a rule, there are always beautiful boxes decorated with shells.

Few of us thought that such a present could be easily made on our own, without shelling out fabulous money to southern craftsmen.

Since ancient times, man has sought to decorate the space around him, remodeling it in accordance with his needs and artistic taste. Today this quality is embodied in the decoration of various household items, in particular, boxes. An ordinary thing becomes unique, original, and acquires individual appeal. She is pleasing to the eye and can become a good gift for a person who will appreciate its beauty and the efforts of the master who created it.

Variety of techniques

As a rule, the main material for boxes is wood. In order to obtain a high-quality finished product, it is necessary to pay great attention to the initial stage of work and properly prepare the material for further decoration. First you need to thoroughly sand the surface and cover it with acrylic primer, or “Gesso” primer for cardboard wood. After priming, it is recommended to sand the workpiece again. You can repeat this process several times to achieve a perfectly smooth surface. After this, you can proceed directly to decorating - the choice of method depends only on your desire and direction of creative thought.

An interesting technique is decoupage, with which any box will turn into a work of art. This method has been known to mankind since the Middle Ages and was very popular in Europe in past centuries. Today, craftsmen are also enthusiastically engaged in decoupage, the meaning of which is to decorate by transferring special pictures to the product.

If you are interested in creating relief surfaces, then you should pay attention to materials such as acrylic relief paste, modeling gels or crystal paste. With their help you can create various textures and unusual effects. In addition, all these materials are well suited for small decorative elements, for example: pebbles, shells, coins, beads, etc.

You can decorate the box using various paintings, from traditional folk paintings (Khokhloma, Mezenskaya, Gorodets, etc.) to point-to-point painting. In the first case, it is good to use waterproof acrylic-based tempera paints, and in the second, acrylic contours. As a pattern, you can use both existing ethnic ornaments and any designs stylized to suit the desired technique.

Scrapbooking: attention to detail

The most popular method of decorating boxes is scrapbooking. Using a variety of elements: fabric, paper, ribbons, beads, threads, you can transform the surface of an object. In addition to the original appearance, the box acquires relief, texture and texture. Before you start working, you need to make a sketch drawing on paper so that you know what the finished product will look like.

First, the surface must be prepared: cleaned of dirt, dust and greasy stains. Then, depending on your idea, you can cover it with fabric or paper, which will give a certain color or texture to the box. Guided by artistic taste and personal preferences, you should gradually add decorative elements. Using decoupage glue they can be attached to the surface of the box.

The quilling technique requires perseverance and patience from a person, for which as a result he will be rewarded with the beautiful appearance of the box. For it you will need strips of paper 5-6 mm wide. They can be colored or white, made yourself or purchased ready-made. A special quilling needle will help you curl paper strips neatly and accurately. You should also take care of the glue, preferably transparent, so that after drying it is not visible, it should grab the paper fairly quickly. The essence of quilling is to create a relief from paper strips, the design of which depends only on the artist’s imagination. To decorate the surface of the box, you should cover it with paper so that the glue has good adhesion and securely fastens the strip.

Do you have a lot of jewelry and would like to store it on your dressing table in a beautiful box? Or are you looking for something else to diversify your home interior? Then you should stop by our page, and we will tell you in detail how to make a jewelry box with your own hands. Let's consider the most affordable and popular options.

Content:

Thick cardboard box

In order to create a feminine and elegant casket, you will need the following materials:

• milk cartons (2 pcs.);
• scissors;
• kraft paper and thick cardboard;
• glue, preferably PVA;
• ribbon;
• magnets (2 pcs.)
• wooden beads (for legs), beads;
• wrapping

Master Class. Step-by-step instruction

Step 1. Cut cubes of the same size from milk cartons without a bottom.

Step 2. Take one part of the shoe box and insert the resulting cubes, glue them together. These will be the cells of the box.

Step 3. Cover the resulting box with wrapping paper and the bottom and inner walls with craft paper.

Step 4. Let’s make a spectacular “wrapper” for our box:

Instead of beads, you can use beads, glass beads and even rose petals, dried or artificial. Decorate the box according to your taste and style, showing imagination and desire.

Examples of beautiful jewelry boxes

Creating a beautiful box yourself is actually quite simple, you just need to pay attention to the objects around you at home and use your ingenuity.

Examples include the following products:

From the packaging for cotton swabs

To create such a cute little thing, take an empty round package from cotton swabs. Cut pieces of colored fabric to the size of the bottom, walls and lid of the future box and carefully glue everything with colorless glue. You can decorate the box with beads, feathers, and various ribbons.

If you have a child in the house, ask him to paint the box himself. Such a cute casket will look great in your bedroom and nursery.

It’s good when a needleworker is on the same page with knitting needles and knitting threads. With their help you can knit an outfit for a box in a very original way.

From a candy box

If you love candy and accidentally left a plastic box of it, rejoice: a cute box for feminine items is almost on your table.

Take a transparent package, sand it with sandpaper, and then cover it with acrylic primer (you can make uneven layers and squiggles). The next step will be painting.

Let the box dry and start decorating.

Design option:

• take a napkin with marine drawings, cut them out and glue them. Use decoupage glue.
• cover the resulting arts and crafts item with a clear layer of acrylic varnish.

From a shoe box

To do this, prepare:

• boxes for any shoes (2 pieces);
• velvet of any color;
• interlining;
• a small piece of crepe satin;
• golden faux leather braid;
• dish sponges or foam rubber;
• pen or pencil;
• matches (needed to burn the fabric);
• newspapers (useful for patterns);
• stapler (staples must be 20 mm);
• iron;
• ruler, tape (not wide);
• scissors, sheets of cardboard;
• iron.

To decorate such a box, it is advisable to opt for designer cardboard, which you can either purchase ready-made or create with your own hands.

From empty matchboxes

Making a casket like the one in the photo is quite easy. You should take only a few matchboxes and glue them in pairs to form some small chests of drawers. To ensure the base does its job, choose thick cardboard and make squares.

Will make an elegant box colored paper with beads, beads and ribbons, stickers, button applique. You can tie it in an original way with multi-colored woolen threads.

From unnecessary books

The most unusual and aesthetically pleasing boxes are made from books that have served their purpose.

To do this, remove all the sheets, leaving only the frame (step back 2 cm from the edge). All pages should form thick walls; to do this, glue them along the entire perimeter. The base is ready. Any little things will be useful in decoration: beads, beads, parts of old hairpins or belts, artificial flowers, lace, scraps of beautiful fabric, etc.

Despite the fact that store windows offer a large number of jewelry boxes made from all kinds of materials, the desire to make one with your own hands does not disappear. After all, this is not only a tribute to one’s talent and skill, but also a desire to have original item, which no one can find. In addition, it is of great importance that the box you make yourself will have exactly the size that is so necessary to accommodate all the jewelry.

The box is made with your own hands in two stages:

1) Creating the box itself from scrap materials;

The material for it can be tape rings, wooden blocks or baguette scraps, old newspapers, shoe boxes, and other improvised materials.

Box made from a tape reel

Box made from a reel of adhesive tape

If a small jewelry box is enough for jewelry, you can make it from a paper spool of tape. Size finished product will correspond to its diameter and height.

To work you will need:
a reel freed from tape; thick cardboard; pencil; scissors; glue (preferably PVA).

For the bottom and lid of the future box, you need to make blanks from cardboard. It is enough to attach the reel to a sheet of cardboard and trace it with a pencil. We outline the resulting circles with another circle, the diameter of which is 3-4 centimeters larger than the previous one. These are the future rays with which the circles will be glued to the reel. You shouldn't make them very wide. The narrower they are, the more accurately the bottom will stick. The end result looks like this:

Before gluing the bottom to the bobbin, it is necessary to draw along the fold line with a non-sharp object, perhaps the edge of tweezers or a metal ruler. This will help you bend them neatly. To hide the petals on the side, you need to stick a cardboard tape over them, the length and width corresponding to the side of the reel.

For the lid you will need to cut a strip slightly longer than the volume of the reel and half its height wide. To ensure that the lid fits well and is not too large, you need to wrap a strip around the future box and glue its edges. When the side of the lid is dry, you need to glue the top to it in the same way as was done with the reel.

To increase the rigidity of the bottom and lid, you can glue another layer of cardboard inside, cut along the inner diameter of the reel. The finished box is decorated with your own hands using the decoupage technique; it can be painted with acrylic paints and opened with varnish, or a self-adhesive film with a pattern imitating natural materials: wood, stone can be glued over the entire surface.

DIY wooden jewelry box

Making such a box is more labor-intensive than the previous version, but it will also last much longer than a paper one. To work you will need:

pencil, ruler;
a long board 10 millimeters thick, 10 centimeters wide, made of soft wood: pine, alder, linden; a board for the bottom and lid, its width is equal to the width of the finished product; hand saw with fine teeth or jigsaw; knife; sandpaper; PVA glue (it’s better to use construction glue) or carpentry glue “Moment”.

Having decided on the size of the box, you need to cut two blanks from the board, equal to its length and width. At the end of each, you need to make a 45-degree bevel with a knife so that the walls fit together nicely. The depth of the bevel is equal to the width of the board.

Before gluing the side parts, you need to make sure that the bevels match tightly, without gaps. Otherwise, they need to be adjusted using coarse sandpaper. The sides are glued together gradually. After each subsequent gluing, it is necessary to check the internal angle between them. It should be equal to 90. Otherwise, the result can be any shape, but not an even rectangle.

There are two options for installing the bottom:

if the finished product will be pasted over with paper or fabric, then the blank for the bottom is taken equal to the size of the box and glued so that its side parts are visible;

Wooden box covered with paper

If a DIY jewelry box is covered only with varnish or paint, then it will look more beautiful when the bottom is hidden inside it. To do this, take a blank that is shorter in length and width than the size of the box by two board thicknesses. For example: if the box dimensions are 10x10 cm and the wall thickness is 1 cm, the bottom needs to be 8x8 cm.

Varnished wooden box

The manufacture of the lid can also be made in two versions:

cut the workpiece and install it on the hinges. Best option fastening the lid - a piece of piano hinge, the length of which is a couple of centimeters shorter than the length of the box. All ends of the boards visible on the finished product must be carefully sanded;

Glue the lid to the box and after drying, carefully cut it off with a jigsaw, moving down the body by one and a half to two centimeters.

A wooden jewelry box is decorated using all known methods: varnishing, painting, decoupage, oracle, fabric, leather.

DIY box made from baguette

Luxurious baguette box

Boxes made from baguette, a material for picture frames, look chic and rich. It is made of wood or plastic. Plastic is soft and can be cut and processed no worse than wood. You can buy a baguette in art salons, having previously determined how long the blank is needed. The principle of making such boxes is identical to working with wooden blanks.

DIY papier-mâché jewelry box

Papier-mâché box

We know what papier-mâché is and how to work with it since school. The advantage of this material is the variety of shapes of the finished product. It is enough just to find the original blank of the required shape to create an original box.

To work you will need:
newspapers or thin office paper; Vaseline or any cream; scissors, brushes; PVA glue or wallpaper.

DIY papier-mâché box

The base must be covered with Vaseline or cream so that the papier-mâché can be easily removed later. The first layer of thinly torn paper needs to be wetted and covered the entire surface of the base. The paper for the second and each subsequent layer is carefully lubricated with glue. It is necessary to ensure that there are no missing sections. It is convenient to alternate, for example, layers of newspaper and white paper. How better paper impregnated with glue - the stronger the papier-mâché will be. The number of layers is optional. After complete drying, the box blank must be removed from the mold and prepared for decoration. If this is a painting with paints, then it must be coated with an acrylic primer. In addition to painting, the box can be decorated with your own hands with beads, ribbons, buttons, figures made of plastic or salt dough.

Chinese papier-mâché box

If the basis for papier-mâché was a round object, the lid was created together with the box, then it must be removed carefully, after first drawing a cut line with a pencil. If the model was created without a lid, then after removing it from the base, you need to straighten the edges with scissors. The lid is attached to the box before being primed. Holes for the connecting cord can be made with a paper hole punch.

The decorated box is opened with your own hands using varnish. It is better to use acrylic-based varnish purchased at an art salon. Artists coat their canvases with this varnish to avoid contamination and fading of the paint.

DIY box made from bamboo napkin

To work you will need:
bamboo napkin; thread and needle, PVA glue; scissors, cardboard, finishing fabric; magnetic clasp.

Cut out the sides of the future box of any shape from cardboard.

Sew or glue decorative fabric to them on both sides, leaving small seam allowances. A bamboo napkin can also be decorated with fabric on the side that will be inside the box. The sides can be sewn or glued to the napkin, leaving some part free.

The clasp can be made in the form of a loop and button, or you can purchase a magnetic one at a hardware store.

To prevent the jewelry box from getting dirty and for a long time had a neat appearance, it was better to open it with acrylic varnish.

Several ways to decorate boxes

Below are photos of jewelry boxes made in different techniques decoration.

For lovers of rigor and minimalism in everything, it is enough to make the box a single color, covering it with paint and protective varnish.

Decoupage decoration technique has recently come into fashion, but has already become very popular. A large assortment of illustrations for decoupage, including images of paintings by great artists, is produced on special napkins. You can use regular napkins, magazine illustrations, and even wrapping paper. You will also need sharp scissors, several brushes, PVA glue, paints, acrylic lacquer. Before starting work, the surface must be primed with acrylic paint or glue. Carefully smooth each element of the image with a brush dipped in glue until it is completely glued to the surface and air bubbles come out from under it.

Proportions for salt dough: 1 part flour (the cheapest without additives) to 3 parts salt, mix and add water until the consistency of soft plasticine. Decorative elements made from dough, unlike putty, are first made and then glued to the surface.
After drying, the decor should be covered with two layers of white acrylic paint. It is better to paint with acrylic too. After drying, apply one or two coats of varnish.

Below are photos of jewelry boxes decorated with beads, seashells, fabric and ribbons:

Box decorated with beads

A homemade box will not only decorate your interior, giving it individuality, but can also be an excellent gift for any occasion. And the material for its manufacture will be any household item or gift from nature. The main thing is a little imagination and perseverance.