DIY Storage Boxes

I am so excited to welcome my good friend Rebecca Ashby, the talented designer behind The Pink Orange, to the blog today. She’s here to share a really fun DIY project, shown two ways. This is perfect for those of you looking to tackle a fun little project over the long holiday weekend and is equally cute for home, wedding or party. Thanks for being here, Rebecca!

Hello everyone! I just wanted to say that I’m so excited to be guest blogging for Cyd. The Sweetest Occasion is one of my daily reads so I jumped at the chance to contribute. A couple of weekends ago, my husband and I were spring cleaning and we found a box of boxes. Yes, a box of boxes. They were leftovers from our wedding 3.5 years ago and we had just stored them away when we bought our house. I kept thinking to myself..”what can I do with 8 of the very same boxes?” BINGO! I had a thought. I will design the same box, but use it in 2 ways! The first I created a monogrammed stage for some peonies that I had. The second, I painted and made a place to collect the piles of mail we get and usually just toss onto our table under the stairs. So, I thought this would be a great project to share with Cyd’s readers. So here goes!

Step 1: I used the boxes from our wedding, but  you could use any box that you can get your hands on. I would check flea markets, thrift stores or even your local Salvation Army for various sizes and colors. Lay your text or monogram out in Word or another layout program. I use Illustrator as a designer and that happens to be my favorite.

Step 2: Print out your text on heavy weight stock. Ideally, cover weight vellum is best, but it is hard to find in just a few sheets, so using the thickest paper your printer can handle is best. I printed both words out on the same piece of paper.

Step 3: Using an X-Acto knife and ruler, trim around each letter. You will find with letters such as ‘A’ and ‘R’, you will have the inner piece of the letter that will fall out. Save it, you will need it to stencil. After you trim around the edges, you can use a small piece of double stick tape or Zots if you have them to stick the inner part of the letters back down.
Step 4: Use Zots or double stick tape to hold your stencil down on your box or whatever you wish to paint. After choosing your paint color, start dabbing with a cloth onto the stencil. If you use card stock, the paint can make the paper wet, therefore easy to tear. If you lightly dab, you will have better results. The best part is, if you dab, it tends to be uneven giving the box a bit of an aged look, which is what I was after with mine. Keep applying lightly until you are happy with the opacity of the paint.
Step 5: Let dry before pulling the stencil off.

Step 6: Decorate!
The other box I made one from the same leftover collection, but I decided to give this one a white wash by mixing some water with the paint color and just wiping it on with a cloth. So, the steps are the same as above, except that if you choose to paint a base coat first, just be sure it is dry completely before using your stencil. I love that the word ‘Mail’ is barely there on this one. I picked a paint color that we had laying around that was almost the same color as the base paint. It is so subtle, and just what I was after. Of course, depending upon what you are using it for, you may want your colors to totally pop and contrast.
Go ahead, decorate and have fun!

{Photos by The Pink Orange.}