Growing a Vintage Seed Box!

by Mary @ Home is Where the Boat Is

With spring around the corner I have bulbs, blooms and seeds on my mind! Tabletop gardening and growing a Vintage Seed Box is a fun project to help you bide your time until spring planting season!

growing a vintage seed box, crafts, decoupage, gardening

I love all things vintage garden, including authentic seed boxes. You can find them on eBay and antique malls, but they are harder to come by these days with prices ranging from $100 to $300 or more, depending on condition of the graphics.

I have been on the look out for a wood box and found one recently one at an antique mall. It was in a sad state but the $15 price tag made it a prime candidate for this project.

I found vintage seed graphics available from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Collection. The graphics and content there have no copyright restrictions and available for download for personal, educational and other non-commercial purposes.

I planned to use Mod Podge to adhere the graphic to my box. I have an Inkjet printer, so I gave the covers a couple of light coats of clear acrylic sealer and let them dry, to prevent the water-based ink from running when I applied the Mod Podge.

The box was battered and in need of some TLC. I cleaned it first and then gave it a couple of coats of Danish oil, I picked up at Lowe's to cover some of the scars and warm up the finish.

To cover the whole inside of the lid of the box, I used a couple of pieces of scrapbook paper I picked up at the craft store for less than a $1.00 to span the width of the box and centered the graphic in the middle. Everything was given a couple of coats of Mod Podge.

I applied a some Plaid FolkArt Antique Medium around the edges of the inside lip of the box. I wiped it off with a damp paper towel to add some additional age.

My vintage Seed Box is planted on the counter of my Potting Shed along with some vintage garden tools, old seed catalogs, hyacinth bulbs and the promise of spring!