One of the things I like about selling my own designs is the physical stall aspect and trying to think of cool ways to display my products, on a small budget! For instance, the ‘gravestones’ that I use to display necklaces and bracelets are pieces of leftover plywood found in my Dad’s shed, which he trimmed down for me so that I could paint and varnish them. And my ring display box is a plastic photo frame from a pound shop, sprayed glossy black and then stuffed with rolls of leopard print fabric (leftover from skirt that I made!).
I was pretty pleased with my most recent crafty display piece so thought I’d post a little how-to in case anyone was interested in trying something similar. I needed a space-saving way of displaying my embroidered coasters and patches – so coffin shaped boxes were the obvious choice!
I started with a small card box (this lasagne box was the perfect size for the items that I wanted to display), opened it out and drew out the shape of the coffin base in the middle.
I cut this shape out, leaving a couple of inches from the sides of the box to fold up to create the new sides.
Next, I re-attached the sides with masking tape, using quite a lot so that it wasn’t too flimsy.
Then got busy with some newspaper paper-mache! For the paste I used PVA glue thinned down with a little water. I put on a fair few layers on the inside and outside of the box to help it stay rigid once dry. And added a set of little handles for decoration.
Once the papermache was dry, I gave it a paint and a varnish and voila – shiny new coffin display boxes for my stall. I made them in two different sizes so that one can be neatly packed away inside the other.
Looking forward to my next adventures in paper-mache now... I feel some 3D gravestones coming on :)
