Fancy Box How-To

After charging my camera batteries for around 815 hours, I have photos ready for a little tutorial. Keep in mind that I am only slightly creative at best, and my execution is kind of horrible. But the idea is what really counts: taking ugly old moving boxes from when you moved 13 years ago (hey hey) and making them look semi-decent so you can use them as storage anywhere in your house! This project is also good if you have over 50 rolls of wrapping paper that you need to use for something. Click the photos for bigger versions.

1. The box.



This is what my bedroom closet looked like before I cleared it out - I de-boxed the top shelf and I de-clothed about half the clothes rack, and I de-crapped the floor. The boxes were still hanging around after all that, somehow, so I came up with the project I will now demonstrate via pictures.

2. Wrap it like a present.



I estimate my boxes to be around 8x13x8, so the wrapping paper didn't quite fit perfectly on each side (you'll see this more in later pictures). But you can start by just laying the box on top of the unfurled roll and cutting it so that the paper covers each of the wide sides. I then folded the extra paper onto the inside of the box and taped it there.

3. Cut diagonally at the box corners for easy folding.



Just make little snippies at the inside corners of the box, so when you fold the paper up over the remaining sides of the box, you don't get paper bunchies. Have some yummies as a snack, maybe rub your tummy, listen to your munchies go crunchy. K I'm stopping.

4. Now fold the new extra paper in like before.



The remaining two sides of your box should now look like this on the inside. Keep in mind you can also use a square box or any other shaped box if that's what you have on hand and want to fancify.

5. When you fold up those two remaining sides of the paper, you should get a triangle-like shape down at the bottom.



This is a little tricky to explain, but hopefully you can use your present-wrapping skills, along with the photo, to figure out what I mean. If you need to, go back to where we made those snippies at the corners. Now pick up the tips of the paper that's hanging off the side of the box and bring them in to meet the center of the box side. Folding over the paper onto the inside, with the help of our snippied part, tape that extra paper down to secure it. Now smooth out the doors of paper you just made against the box; you should get something like the triangle I have here. If you're better at wrapping presents, then you'll get well I don't know what you'll get, just move on, you queen of present wrapping. Whateva.

6. Fold up that triangle.



Easy as pie. Now just tape that pie slice (the triangle) up to the side of the box. Smooth out any weird paper waves.

7. Be "creative" and cover any mistakes you made.



Since I'm not the queen of present or box wrapping, I had an ugly strip of my old box showing, and the triangle was shorter than I expected. So I took out some old poster board I've had since high school and made this little strip. I did it on both sides because I like symmetry. You don't have to like symmetry, but you also don't have to call me up in the middle of the night when your ugly box is haunting you from the closet.

8. Wrap the box top.



Pretty self-explanatory. I just barely had enough paper left on this dying roll to do each short side of the box top. My creativity knows no bounds, so for the top...

9. ...Be creative. Always.



I used more of that same poster paper to cover up the still-hideous top of the box. Got many different paper media used up that day! Success.

10. Labels!!



Labeling is important, as I've said before. So do something sorta makeshift or whateva. You can see how laughable my own writing and labeling is here (I didn't have enough room for the word "contents" so I cheated in a very erudite manner by making it French - "contenu"). Do your own thing. Or copy mine. Better, though. Of course.

Tell me your project ideas! And link me to photos (completed projects or incomplete, doesn't matter) if you want. I may even try them for myself. Better, though. Of course.