home fashion: Painted Wooden Boxes

A design trend I'm seeing everywhere these days is the colorful geometric pattern. I'm crazy for it, and have some fun notebooks that make me happy just looking at them. I wanted to bring more geometric pattern into my life and yesterday, created a colorful, decorative box for my office. All you need for this project is an inexpensive wooden box from the craft store, craft paint, paint brushes, painters tape, and clear enamel spray to give your box a glossy finish.

MAKE A GEOMETRIC PATTERNED BOX

I started with a rough sketch of how I wanted my pattern to look, then used a ruler to draw straight lines on the box. I used one of my favorite color combinations: hot pink, light pink, black, white and gold and dotted them on the box where the the paint would go. Then, I taped off the first areas to paint. It's key that you press the tape down very firmly so that you get crisp lines and no paint seeps through. I used Scotch Blue Painter's Tape With Edgeblock and it works great. I only had a couple of minor spots to touch up with a small paint brush when I was done. Which reminds me to tell you to use a better quality paint brush. My first brush was a cheap one and the bristles kept coming off onto the paint and I had to dig them out with tweezers- annoying. The project was much more enjoyable with these brushes.

follow these steps

I painted three quick coats before removing the tape and moving on to another section. The paint dries quickly on this wooden box, and taping over a dry section was fine.

Continuing the paint down the sides of the boxes looks cool too.

I painted the box with a piece of paper in between the top and bottom, but it still nearly sealed closed while painting- I should have used painter's tape! I haven't painted the entire inside yet just the edges so that when it's closed, you don't see any wood peeking through.