How to Wrap a Box (without making it look like you wrapped a box)

My husband was out of town last week. I found myself staying up way too late every night, clinging to the warm glow of HGTV eminating from our tv. I may or may not have downed an entire sack of dried bananas one night (helloooo, 240% of my daily saturated fat).

 

But one productive thing I did do was add a little color to my entry table, via a wrapping paper-covered old cell phone box. And while a tutorial on such things is probably a bit overkill, I have nothing to say 'cept: look at my dried banana consumption. Overkill is how I roll.

 

Here's how I did it:

Step 1: Get box. The color is so bright, it would show through just a single sheet of wrapping paper. So I wrapped the lid with a plain sheet of white paper first.

 

 

Step 2: Using some kind of spray adhesive (LOVE this stuff)...

 

...lightly spray the middle of the paper. Set box lid on this area and smooth it out. Then lightly spray the first long side (clear to the edge of the paper). Don't overdo the spray adhesive; that stuff is powerful, and this is just paper. A little spritz will do just fine.

 

Step 3: Fold the first long edge up, and smooth it out. Repeat on opposide long edge.

 

Step 4: You really want both layers of paper to be smooth and taut, so make sure everything is smooth before you move on. Then cut slits for the excess paper foldover.

 

Step 5: I didn't want the box to look like someone came and dropped off a present on my entry table (although, don't get me wrong, I loooove presents dropped off anywhere), so I opted to keep edges streamlined and cut every bit of excess paper off. This includes the four squares at the corners. 

 

Step 6: Spray adhesive onto the last two sides (the short edges), and repeat steps 2-4. Your base layer of white paper should be done, and your box should look smooth.

 

Step 7: Choose your wrapping (or scrapbook...or any other kind of) paper for the outer layer. This time, use the spray adhesive to do the top (or bottom, in the photo below) and all four sides at the same time. Fold each edge up, smooth it with your fingers, and then crease each corner to make a kind of triangle at each corner.

 

Step 8: Carefully and as closely to the box as possible (I even turned my scissors so the blade of the bottom scissor-part was directly next to the box corner), cut each corner exactly on the four corner folds.

 

Step 9: Fold over all the edges, smooth them down. (You could cover the whole thing with ModPodge here, but I didn't. I had dried bananas to eat, people.) You're done! Unless you wanted to move onto step 10...

 

...Step 10: Use Sharpies and a ruler to draw stripes onto a piece of white cardstock (Sharpie Art! yesss.), then wrap aNOTHer box in that cardstock following this tutorial. Just because stripes are an awesome graphic.

 

 Welp, there you go. Cheapest project ever. I like how the wrapping paper print ties in with the botanicals, and the b&w stripes tie in with the lines of, well, everything.

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Ack! Blogger just ate some links where I shared this...please let me know if I'm missing your URL, and I'll add it ASAP. So sorry!