Earth day was this past Sunday so I wanted to make a project using primarily recycled materials. I honestly love projects like these the most, they stretch my creativity and they are super affordable.
My son recently had a birthday and got a bunch of new toys, one was a wooden train set in a really fun wood box/tray. I took one look at it and thought "this looks like a lightbox" so of course that packaging became mine and he got the fun choo-choo.
We also live in a new construction neighborhood and there are 4 homes being built across the street from us. I watch as the construction workers dump perfectly good wood into those huge dumpsters. I have no shame in saying that every once in awhile I rescue a few of those lumber scraps and give them a new home...in my garage! What? I'm just trying to do my part to save the planet!
The Supply List:
See how awesome this wooden box is?!!
Technically, you can leave the wood as is, but I wanted to paint it to match my craft room I'm currently working on redecorating.
I used some masking tape to tape off the sides and painted the back white.
Once the white paint dried I removed the masking tape and painted the rest of the box a robin's egg blue.
While that paint dries let's chop the wood strip into blocks. I made them 1.5" wide. A trick is to measure and cut one block, then use it as a guide to cut the other pieces. Watch those fingers!!
Now the worst part, sanding, the downside of working with wood for me but it is necessary if you don't want one million splinters and the vinyl to stick.
Now that you have a pile of wood blocks, it's time to come up with your phrase. I can only fit 8 blocks max in each line so creative thinking time was my next step.
Open Silhouette Studio and write your brilliant phrase. This is for my craft room so obviously it had to involve crafting somehow.
I'm using the Mila Jane font from The Best Sellers Font Bundle V.
I was worried the letters would be too thin to work with since I plan on using them like stickers. I used the offset tool to make it a little bit thicker.
Then, I added a heart graphic from the font Luca Bell.
Size it all to fit your wood blocks.
Go ahead and send it to be cut.
After it's cut, weed out the extra vinyl using your hook tool.
Normally, this is where you would use transfer tape to shift the words onto your surface. Since these are simple single letter blocks, I just attached it like a sticker.
(You actually could just use real stickers if you don't have a cutting machine)
Arrange your words in the wood box and admire your work.
I'm calling it my rustic faux lightbox. Can you believe all of the wood was recycled? The other materials were leftover paint and about 3" of a vinyl sheet so this maybe cost about one dollar in materials. Gotta love that!
Here is another angle.
You're going to start rethinking throwing away those toy packages now, aren't you? Just remember, we can all save the planet one recycled craft project at a time.
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