LatteLove's vintage hat box turned card box

One day, my wonderful aunt jet (aka Crafty Auntie) went up to her attic one one of our crafting days and came down with a box that looked just like this.  I think it belonged to my great-great aunt.

source

She got out a box cutter, brown spray paint, and a pile of silky cords in different shapes and sizes, all in my wedding colors! ("for embellishment" she said)

[Seriously, the jet's house/garage has any kind of crafting and building tool you can imagine.]

Then we started with the box. I took out the biggest greeting card I could find and used it to measure the hole, and added an inch. The hole was about 1.5" x 9". I cut it with the box cutter after tracing the lines with a ruler. Old hat boxes have really thick covers with several layers....so be careful when cutting!

photo by me

Next, We had to change the color of that vintage floral wallpaper stuck to the box.In order to neutralize the color, we started with 2 layers of white spray paint.

The next week, we got to work on the brown. Ok Aunt Jet got to work while I took pictures:

We painted at least 3 coats if not 4, about 10 minutes apart. Then we left it for another hour or two to dry.

As I was contemplating how to decorate the box, I remembered Miss Taffy's post on Weddingbee about the rope signs she made for her seed-themed shower.Voila! We had our card-box idea.

I picked this ivory colored rope and set it aside.>

I carefully traced with white chalk the word "cards". After many tries and much erasing, I got out craft glue and traced the chalk, on letter at a time. I wrote it in cursive not because I liked how it looked, but because the rope frayed very easily and I didn't want to have to cut it more than at the beginning and the end.

After carefully laying the rope over the glue outlined letters, I held the rounded letters ("r" and "d" were the hardest to keep together) with my hand for 10 minutes or so until i was confident they wouldn't slide around.

My first try, I felt that the letters were too off center and disproportionate so type A me ripped the rope off the box. re-spray painted the top, and started over!

see how big the "c" and "a" are compared to the "d"? yikes!

The second try was more successful (though still not centered!)

The glue dried within a day, completely clear....and this is what I ended up with!

photo by Uncle Cam

photo by Little Hands Photography

So I'm working on this one right now, and I wanted to share a warning.  Spray paint does not always wash off skin very easily, so don't do it right before your wedding.  I've worked with spray paint before, so this wasn't a huge surprise, but it's something I always seem to forget.