Making Decorative Storage Boxes

For people who enjoy doing crafts or want to start with scrap booking, or anyone else who is simply interested in creating their own personalized storage to coordinate with their home’s decor, spending some time making decorative storage boxes can be fun and rewarding. Among the options for decorating boxes, two are especially common. Both processes start off with the boxes themselves, which can be basically any sort of plain box. You might be able to find something just laying around the house, such as a shoe box, but hobby stores and some more general retailers also sell simple boxes that can be decorated.

Option number one is to use paper to decorate your boxes. Any sort of paper will work, from pictures to pretty wrapping paper to pages cut out of a magazine. Your imagination is the limit, and if you keep an eye out for good candidates, it is easy to end up with a giant collection of paper that might find its way onto a box someday. The process of attaching the paper to the boxes is called decoupage, and uses a special kind of glue. The paper gets glued on one little section at a time, and then at the end the entire pattern gets a coat of glue before being set out to dry.

Option number two for making decorative storage boxes is to use fabric. The two main things needed for this method are fabric and quilter’s batting. The batting is to pad the fabric, so you only need enough for the outside of the box, though you can use it on the interior of the box as well if you choose. For fabric, there needs to be enough for both, the interior and exterior. This process is not quite as simple as using paper, but if done correctly can look quite nice. The fabric has to be measured and cut exactly to fit, and glued on smoothly with no seams showing. Practice first to get the hang of it. Decorative boxes can be a lot of fun to make, and remember that the design possibilities are limited only by your own imagination and creativity.