EverydayMae: Tutorial Tuesday!

I absolutely love reading tutorials on DIY stuff. So when I was planning to do this myself, I thought 'why not make a tutorial out of it?' For this tutorial I am going to show you how to Decorate a Hat box.

So here's the back story behind my hat box:

After a friend’s wedding I decided that I would like a hatbox to house my pretty hair accessories. I bought a creamy/white feather fascinator thing to wear, but it’s too nice to put in my ‘regular’ hair draw so that’s where I got the idea for a hatbox. Naturally, I’m not going to shell out big bucks for a nice one, so I decided that I would make/decorate one myself.

I picked up a round wooden box at my local craft shop. From memory it cost me less than $5? I then took my time to find the ‘right paper’. (I bought gift wrap, only $2 and I got 3 metres of it!). Here is my tutorial on how I decorated my hatbox.

Step 1: Assembling all items. You will need a box (round, square, rectangular, what ever your preference) paper to cover it, paint brush, glue (I used PVA, but most craft glue will be fine as long as it dries clear), pen and scissors.

Step 2: Making the shapes. Use the form of the hatbox as your template. Draw the outline and then add extra (enough to cover the sides with some more to tuck under). Be quite generous with the shapes, you can always trim them later. Proceed to cut out these shapes.

Step 3: Get the glue ready. I didn’t pour enough out and so I had to keep stopping to top it up. You can start on the lid or the bottom, it’s your choice. Glue the surface of the lid/bottom to the paper. Then spread glue on the remaining paper and fold up and over the sides to tuck it in until it looks like the picture below.

Step 4: Repeat the above step on the other piece of the hat box. If you are glueing the bottom piece now you will notice there will be a lot of excess paper. What I did was simply fold the pieces on a diagonal to sort of ‘pleat’ the paper so to speak. You could also trim the excess if you wanted a tighter looks.

Step 5: Once you have finished the previous step, go along on the inside and glue any pesky pieces that may have popped up. At this point I like to also go along and cover the entire paper in glue to seal it in. Now leave to dry!

Step 6: Add decorations. I choose to add a lace decoration on my hatbox. I sized the pieces to fit over the top of the box and tuck under for easy gluing. Feel free to interpret and decorate your box however you like! I then filled the hatbox with white tissue paper and introduced my fascinator to its new home!