Jean Day Miniatures Home Page

Jean Day Miniatures
 Lady's Hat Boxes
This is one of the easier designs for making a hat box or stacking boxes. It has no tabs and can be made very quickly with a variety of papers and containers. I have used my printable for this container and a plastic film canister. Wallpaper scraps, wallpaper samples and coloured designs from magazines also work well. For the container you can use pill bottles, dowels, plastic toothpick holders or anything else to give you a basic shape.
The straw hat directions are under Projects.

Tools and Supplies

Cutting board, self healing ones are great
 toothpicks
piece of card stock
printable designs or printed paper or wallpaper
Xacto knife and sharp blades
Glue stick
Tacky glue or Grrrip glue
Film canister, dowels or pill containers

Printable pattern for the hat box, there is an extra lid piece that could be used inside the hat box 

 



 

 Hat Box Body

Print out the printable on good quality paper and spray with Krylon UV or some other protective coating. Cut the hat box body. Glue it onto a piece of card stock with a glue stick. Wrap this piece around the film canister , overlap and glue, cut off excess overlap. Let the glue dry.

Hat Box Bottom

Slip the hat box body off the film canister and draw trace onto paper the bottom of the film canister for your pattern.  Glue three layers of card stock together and cut out the circle design you have just made. The circle should be cut small enough that it will fit in the bottom of the hat box. Run some Grrrip glue along the edge of the circle, glue the card stock circle inside the bottom of the hat box. 

Hat Box Lid

Cut out and glue the top hat box lid edge onto a piece of card stock. Withthe body of the hat box still on the canister  wrap and glue the band around. Make it a bit loose so that it slips off easily.

Cut out the lid piece and glue it to a single piece of card stock. Draw a circle on the design so that it will be as large as the hat box lid trim. Cut out this top circle piece and glue it to the top of the trim. You are now finished you hat box and hopefully at this point the lid with slip on and off the box easily.

Finished Hat Box

I hope you will try this technique with many shapes and sizes of boxes. I like to put a piece of folded tissue inside the hat box. I found a plastic oval toothpick holder that worked really well for oval hat boxes too.

 

© Jean Day Miniatures 2002
Backgrounds thanks to Snickerdoodle Graphics