Our Pink & Green DIY Card Box

This may be my favorite DIY project yet. Not so much because of the finished product, but more because it was just soooo easy. We needed a card box for our gift table, and I wanted something that was just sort of small, because we are also displaying one of our framed monograms (not the one pictured) on the gift table. So, I made a trip to Hobby Lobby and got the supplies:

A 10X10x10 cardboard box with lid, fabric, ribbon, a craft knife and spray glue. My total was around $20. Because I chose a damask-style fabric with a design that goes in one direction, I could not just wrap the box like a present and call it a day. Instead, I cut 2 long strips of fabric, each long enough to secure inside the rim and just wide enough to fold the edges over. I sprayed the long sides and folded the edges so they would have a finished look. Now, if you ever plan on doing this, and you can sew, it would probably be a good idea to just hem the edges. But, I am still a very novice sewer and even hemming an edge can be tricky for me. Sad but true. After getting the edges finished, I attached one panel to the box, which looked like this:

After applying both panels to the sides, then came the lid. I basically wrapped the lid like you would wrap a present, only making sure that the sides were straight and not pointed. After the entire box was wrapped with fabric, it looked like this:

For the slit in the top of the box (which I forgot to picture), I attempted using the craft knife that I bought. Bad idea. That knife wasn't even worth the $1.99 w/ 30% off that I paid for it. It broke as soon as I attempted to cut with it. So, I had to rummage through Ryan's tools for something, and luckily he had a very sharp box cutter. This worked perfectly. I made a slit just large enough so that you could see it, but not so wide that you could see inside, since my unfinished fabric edges were secured in there. My last step was to wrap some pink satin ribbon around the center, securing it with the spray glue, and then attaching a little sign on the front, in the same font (albemarle swash) that we have used for all of our wedding stuff. Here's the finished product:


This entire project only took one rerun of The City to complete, which is less than 30 minutes for those of you who don't speak MTV. All in all, I am really happy with the way it turned out. But, I do have another suggestion for anyone who may attempt this project. Basically, spray glue= evil. My fingers are sticking to the keys as I am typing this. It gets everywhere and is sooo hard to get off of your fingers. So, it may be wise to try something else. Or if you do use spray glue, maybe try some latex gloves or something.

As of tomorrow, we have 4 months to go... and hardly any big projects left! woohoo!