Monkeymaid stuff: Upcycle idea

Up-cycle an old box

I don't know about you, but I just love looking through other blogs that people have done and seeing how they make things, whether it be recipes for homemade bread, or a new way to use coconut oil, different crafting suggestions, even how to recycle old clothing.

I am always looking for new ideas.

Most of the time I am sitting with my 5 year old daughter, who is also crazy about all things creative, especially crafting.

While we were looking through a few videos, we came across one on how to decorate a plain box and make it into a cute trinket box.

Here is the link for the original video we saw that inspired us to make our own. (thank you Fi)

We love to recycle and up-cycle, and so we started to search the house for a box to decorate, Moo found this pretty box which she had scribbled on previously, it was the ideal candidate for a make-over, and so we began.....

This is what the inside of the box looks like, we didn't want to change anything about it, we think it is quite nice as it is..

So, first of all we had a look through our arts and craft supplies, we wanted some sort of material to cover the box and found a nice piece of pink felt, It has to be pink, Moo is a true girlie girl and nothing else would do LOL

Now we made sure it was big enough, measured the width and length of the box and cut to size using a ruler and a sharp craft knife. (please take care when doing this, those knifes really are very sharp)

Once we had the piece ready we plugged in the glue gun, made sure we had enough spare glue sticks and waited for it to heat up.

While we waited, we got out the tins of ribbon scraps and beads, embellishments, and anything else that we thought would look good on the box.

We found some nice cotton ribbon that we liked, and a few other bits, and started by sticking the ribbon around the edge of the box with the glue gun.

A good tip is to add a little glue and place a little of the ribbon at a time, if you try to add a whole line of glue, it will probably have dried hard before you get the ribbon stuck to it.

Once we had the ribbon on, we glued on the felt.

Looks a little messy, but not to worry, we are going to cover it with embellishments.

And really this is the fun part!!

We placed flowers and butterflies on the lid to see what they looked like, when we were happy, we glued on the first layer, its good to try and think about your layers before you start to glue, you don't want to just glue any old how, as you will find that you want some bits under and some on top of others, does that make sense??

We started with the small sequin flowers for the edge of the box..

Already looks better, but lets keep adding...

We layered the flowers before adding them to the box, that was just to make sure that we were happy with the flower before it was a permanent fixture.

The centre of the flowers were a little plain for us, so we popped in either beads or a few gems to brighten it up a bit.

On the front we used some small clay flowers that I had. We left a big enough gap at the front to add something else, once we had finished, but we were not sure what yet...

Now we were happy with the overall look, we wanted to finish it off, add a few little extras...

We love the little dragonfly in the bottom right corner.

So there it is, all finishing touches added, a fabric heart on the very front, a handmade cotton ribbon flower on the top along with a butterfly and a few other little bits.

And I am sorry, but I forgot to take a picture of the back, but we added a couple of small butterflies there too.

Hope you like it and feel inspired to make you own.