heidzillas how to: pride & joy card box

so the title might be a little bewildering, but honestly once i was finished with this project, this card box is my pride and joy! mind you, i had done a lot of research into other similar card boxes… but knew i could do something similar for cheaper. 

• a past bride wanted $50 for her card box and said she had spent $80 on materials
• an ebay store wanted $125
• an online card box company sold them from $60 – $160…  
• the best i found was a great custom card box store for $65 but i still felt like i could do it for less… 

AND I DID – at less than half the cost of the favorite online store…  

what you need: 

• 1 set of 5 stacking paper mache boxes from pat catans (i only used 3 though, it was around $12.00)
• 2 rolls of wrapping paper, enough yardage of material, or paint – (can be any price point depending on what you choose)
• 3 rolls of 1.5″ satin ribbon – 4 yards each from pat catans  (in the $2.00 ballpark) 
• 1 roll of scotch satin gift wrap tape  

 

how to do it:

step one: i got an idea of how they would stack in order to decide where to cut the holes.

step two: i cut the first hole but kept the cut out piece. i used a larger pearing knife… x-actos aren’t strong enough and i didn’t have a heavy box cutter.

step three: used the cut out piece as a template to cut the box above it. then, i repeated steps one and two for the top tier. 

step four: then i wrapped the boxes. you could wrap before or after, i did after in order to roll the paper over the cut out square so it was smooth and so i wouldn’t rip the paper trying to cut the hole out. either way works.

then i cut individual strips of ribbon to make the box appear to have a connecting ribbon from top to bottom. tape secured it to the box. 

step five: the tricky part about the ribbon was to line the boxes up where they’d be sitting to make sure each tier’s ribbon lined up with the tier’s below it. 

step six: i used thumbtacks to secure the bottom and middle tiers together. these worked great so i didn’t need glue or staples, which can be messy or difficult to actually use. 

step seven: with the top tier, i affixed the ribbon where it should go and cut a single slit in the box parallel to the ribbon. then i cut slits at the end of the long slit  - in a sort of “I” fashion

step eight: i lifted the paper – carefully! – and cut the slit to be about .5″ wide

step nine: then i taped the wrapping paper underneath

step ten – in order to secure the top tier, again with out glue or staples, and so the cards could be accessed after the wedding without having to ruin the card box, i used small stick-on velcro dots on the bottom of the first tier and top of the second tier. this was also a tinge tricky, but i finally got them just right… 

step eleven: i used quite a bit of ribbon to make a 3 looped bow and placed it to the top of the box with thumb tacks. 

step twelve: i used a few more inches of ribbon to loop over the bow and secured it with the existing thumb tacks that were holding down the bow

ta-daaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

like i said, it’s my new pride and joy.

and it matches reaaaaaaaally cute with jillian’s table numbers, flip flop baskets and other decor. more to come soon!