Jewelry Box / Drink Coaster boxes etc.

This is my first attempt at so many elements, so lets just start from the top. These are gifts I made for a Dungeons and Dragons group if you’re wondering about the dragons.

First, the outside of the boxes were made from old crown molding scraps, which worked amazingly! The bottoms have a cut out inset much like what you see on the top to put an 8th inch board for the bottom. Mini staples and glue for hold there as well as the joints. M

Once together I used all purpose adhesive to glue down velvet squares… which is way harder than I thought because of how stretchy the material is. Eventually I used a square cut from a cereal box to hold the velvet in shape, spray a LITTLE bit of all purpose adhesive to coat the bottom inside of the box and then plunk the velvet in using the cereal box square to smooth it out.

Finally the Coasters/lids are whatever thickness you made the gap at the top to inset them, or use the inset as a base attachment to another lid to make a taller type (next thing I am trying). Just made them out of scraps into squares and rounded edges minimally.

I got the designs off a free design generator website, printed them on plain paper after tweaking the size a bit. Then I shaded the back of the picture thickly with a lead pencil placed the picture I wanted to do onto the location on the lid and traced the outline of the picture firmly. After ruining my first attempt, my brilliant wife suggested taping the paper in place ;). Voila! A perfectish design done in pencil by someone very untalented in that particular brand of art. I then burned the design into the wood with a burner tool from home depot. Not bad for a first attempt, huh? You can see where I messed up and had to sand/alter the design if you look for it. The second time I went for the more complicated design.

Finally I finished with a spray semi gloss poly lacquer: layer, light sand, layer and here you are!

This is the first time Ive ever claimed a project 100% as mine without help from my father who taught me lol, so if you have tricks, suggestions for cool things to try next, or tips for how to better explain my process in the writing here, please go ahead

-- "And this is the testimony last of all, we give of him, that he lives."