Kaiser Photo Box

Hi all,

As you may have seen in a previous post, I recently finished decorating a kaisercraft wooden recipe box to use as a photo box. The recipe boxes are the perfect size for storing photographs you may have printed for potential scrapbooking or even special event photographs. As you will see from my photobox, I have decorated it with wedding photos, so one of these photo boxes would actually make a really wonderful gift for a special occasion, such as a wedding, anniversary or birth of a baby.

Kaiser wood BTP items are so easy to decorate. I tend to use the wooden pieces as stencils for cutting out my patterned papers, tracing them on the reverse side of the paper that I wish to use. The same can be done with photos, making sure they are slighltly bigger than the spaces they will be filling so you can fasten them to the inner wall of the box. Once I have all my papers cut out, I start gluing them on with a good quality craft glue. One that does not bubble or leave wet marks through your paper. You will usually find you have some extra paper hanging over the edges once you cut this off. The best way to smooth out these edges is to sand them away. I actually use a chisel to do this as its really quick and easy but normal sand paper or blocks do the job too.

After I have sanded my edges, in this particular case I wanted an aged look to my photo box so I went around the edges using some distressed 'vintage photo' ink by Tim Holtz using an ink block. You can do this as faintly or as dark as you wish to get the look you want.

Then it's a matter of putting your box together. Once all the pieces are fitting nicely together, use some strong glue such as Mod podge or Kaiser wood glue to hold your box together. This is a gradual process as you may need to hold your pieces in place for a while or have them weighted while they dry.

Then it is simply a matter of embellishing the box as you please. I used rub ons, flowers, a doily and bling to decorate my box, and a layer of buttons to create a pretty vintage handle to open the box. The pearl strings are actually vintage also, given to me by my mother in law as left overs from when she made her wedding head piece.

So now I have a lovely photo box to store photos ready for scrapping and the great thing is, these boxes come with dividers so you can divide your photos into themes to save time for your next scrapping project.

I am excited that the Kaiser DT call for 2012-2013 has been announced. Fingers crossed but there is so much amazing talent who will be in the running.

Have a great day everyone.

Holly x