Wood Chest Grad Card Box

Hello Crafters!

Keeping with our graduation theme, today we'll be working on making a graduation card box out of one of our wood chests!

 

 

Card boxes can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and since we have a large variety of wood boxes and chests, this can be a perfect opportunity to get creative with them, just in time for graduation. Just like last week, I'll be keeping to the McKinley High School theme for this chest. So what I did was paint the top of the chest like the head of a tiger, the McKinley mascot, while keeping to their school colors, black and gold. For extra flare, I gave him foamie ears on the back, and fangs when his "mouth" opens up to receive cards. Along the front I glued "2016", which can easily be a graduate's name instead for your card box.

 

 

For this project, the materials I used are:

- Unfinished medium sized wooden chest

- Design Master yellow spray paint
- Design Master glossy black spray paint

- Black Ceramcoat Acrylic Paint

- Citrus Ceramcoat Acrylic Paint

- 2mm Goldenrod Foamie Sheet

- 6mm Black Foamie Sheet

- 6mm White Foamie Sheet

- Yellow/Gold cardstock

- Accu Cut Machine (Not Pictured)

 

 

First step for this card box is spray paint. I spray painted the inside of the chest with glossy black, and the entire outside with yellow. I suggest you spray the inside first, but try not to get any of it on the outside of the box. Spray the inside first so when you paint the outside, you can cover up any mistakes you made.

 

Next, once that's dry, sketch out the pattern of the tiger head with a light pencil. Like last week, I used the McKinley High School sticker we have in Ben Franklin as reference for the tiger. Only draw the top half of the tiger's face across the top off the chest. Remember, the opening of the chest will serve as the "mouth." This is optional, but I continued drawing the sides of the tiger's face down the sides of the chest.

 



Once you have your pattern all sketched out, go ahead and paint it with the acrylic paints. I used black for the tiger stripes and nose, and white for part's of the tiger fur and his eyes. I painted the rest of the chest that wasn't a tiger black, so that includes the front bottom half of the chest.

 

Now for the fun part. while the paint is drying, you can start on his ears and teeth. From my white Foamie sheet, I cut two long curved triangles, "fang" shapes. It's important that when you cut these out, leave an extra inch or so at the base of each fang. Now cut two more pieces of foam that are about an inch by an inch and a half rectangles. With your two fangs pointing towards you, and curved toward each other, you are going to glue one rectangle piece on the top base of each tooth.

 

Now you are going to glue the fangs to the chest. Apply the glue to the rectangle parts of each fang, and glue them to the inside of the front of the top of the chest. Place them according to where the mouth is painted on the outside of the chest. Now your tiger has some teeth! The extra rectangle pieces are to keep the teeth from being flush with the chest so it can still close properly.

 

Now for the ears. Out of the black 6mm foam, I cut two "shark fin" like shapes with rounded tops. (That's just what the tiger's ears looked like to me.) If you want to make them more triangular, that's ok too. Next, trace the black shapes onto the yellow foam sheet and cut two matching pieces out. on each yellow piece, cut out a smaller "fin" or triangle shape from the bottom of the shape. Now glue the yellow pieces to the black pieces, but make sure you glue them on opposite sides, so you'll have a left and right ear.

For this last step I just used scraps of my yellow foam, but you are free to make them the same shape as your ears, but leave about an inch extra length on the bottom. Glue these pieces to the backs of each ear. Now each ear should have a tab at the bottom.

glue each tab to the back corners of the top of the chest with your ears facing forward. The back of your chest should look like this.

 

 

You're almost done! Now all that's left is to decorate the front. I cut out "2016" in yellow cardstock in the typewriter font from the Accu Cut and glued it to the bottom front of my chest. Of course this would also be the perfect spot to have a graduate's name as well.
That's it! You tiger grad card box is complete! Of course this is just one of many possibilities you can create for ta unique card box for the graduate's special day. Good luck and I hope this was helpful for some creative ideas!

 

James@ Market City