DIYing: Card Box Style

Okay, so stop for a second and think "card box." Did you do it? Okay, what comes to your mind? Maybe something hip and cool and pop and fresh? Well, not mine, not until recently anyway.. . was it even box shaped?

Before I began wedding researching online and becoming a Google McGoogleton, my idea of a cardbox was this (from Amazon).
Is it awful? No. Is it super traditional? Maybe, I'm not sure about card box tradition, but I'll tell you what it isn't: me. Or me and Mr. Giraffe, rather.

I don't hate it, I just can't picture it at my wedding. Sure we're rocking the traditional but modern in disguise theme, but that car box (or card chest, I suppose) doesn't really look like our personal style, or our wedding style really (what ever that style is).

So what our my options? Well, originally, I thought the only alternative was the slightly different, but def chic bird house/cage. (From here)
See, I love that cage! I think its totally cute, and there's a ton of different card cages available online. If you're curious, they seem to range from about $17-$40.

I thought for the longest time that Mr. G and I would do the bird card cage (despite our lack of bird theme or decor, but I was pretty sure it didn't matter).

What changed you ask? Well bridesmaid Marie and I do wedding stuff together all the time. As we were walking around JoAnn's, she found a set of 3 stackable boxes (in 3 different sizes) for only $9.99. Mar bought the round ones and I snagged the rectangle boxes. Going a few store fronts down, with our fiances in tow, we headed to Archiver's (a scrapbook store). Mr. G and I picked up fancy shiny scrapbook paper in our wedding colors to use to decorate the boxes.

Side bar: Funny story; I didn't buy enough paper and went back a couple of weeks later to get some more. They didn't have it anymore, so I bought the same 12"x12" paper in a 8.5"x11" cardstock for more money. Lame sauce. They didn't have any of the blue paper so I bought some other blue paper to supplement the blue pile. The new one actually has little silver snowflakes on it, but I'm just hoping people think they're little stars. They're hard to notice anyway. Okay, so this story wasn't so funny, but it does have a morale: buy extra of whatever it is you're using. You can always take it back later!

Here's my inspiration I dug up after buying the boxes (From here on OnceWed). I think its super cute. I'm hoping to go for a more stack of presents look than a cake look though. I love the idea of having it look like a stack of presents on our gift table. (image source)
A few weeks later, I headed over to Bridesmaid Marie's (and Groosman Mike's) place for a wedding craft day. We started with the craft boxes. Here's the start, and you can see the sizes of the boxes. (Also, you can see my Taco Bell cup. Yum!)
You can see some of the paper, I got a few different kinds that had brown and blue on them.

Step 1) Use a pencil or pen (and ruler in my case) to trace out a slightly smaller rectangle on the top and bottom of the box. Make sure the bottom hole of one box is the same size as the top hole of the one under it.


Step 2) Cut out squares for the boxes. We did 1"x1" square for the smallest box, 1.25"x1.25" for the medium box and 1.5"x1.5" for the largest.
Mar and I (both avid scrapbookers) had some trouble with step two. Our conversation went as follows:

Marie getting frustrated with the paper cutter.
Miss Giraffe: "Just think of it as good practice for when we have to make your card box!"
Marie: "When I do mine, I think I'm just going to use the Cricut."
We proceeded to look right at each other and die laughing.

We both have Cricuts and use them allll the time, so why wouldn't we think of them now? Or why wouldn't Marie had spoken up sooner?
This is where I took a picture of Marie right after she mentioned the Cricut. Classic.

Step 4) Get out Cricut and cut out square much more efficiently. For those Cricut users, we set the size of the square we wanted and just pressed the "Fill Page" button.
Step 5) Break out the Mod Podge! I find the easier brush to do this with is the $.25 foam craft brushes. 'Paint' a coat onto the box, stick on a square, and put another coat of Mod Podge over it. I've used Mod Podge is like a billion projects in the past so I know that its amazing (I usually buy it at Michale's with a coupon), but I bought a brand new container for this project.
Then just repeat and repeat and repeat! Once you finish a box and it dries, paint another coat of Mod Podge over the whole thing to keep it protected.

The small box I was working on and the middle sized box Marie was working on.

So wondering what the finished product looks like? Me too! No, but really, it's almost done, but not quite. The large box is only half done, but it will be soon. I'll post some pictures as soon as its done!

Anybody else breaking out of the [card] box?