DiY Outdoor Christmas Gifts {Inspired by Grandin Road}
Christmas. For some, it’s a time of family gatherings and joyous celebration, while rosy-cheeked children laugh and cavort before a roaring fire. For others, it’s a time to see those jerk-faced in-laws, while their rotten brats scream and shriek for more presents under the rickety old fake tree that Uncle Fred fixed with duct tape last year.
For me, Christmas means catalogs. And catalogs. And more catalogs. An endless stream of glossy capitalism from every Ronnie Retailer and Sally Superstore that starts before Halloween and doesn’t end until the new year puckers up people’s wallets and slams the populace with a vicious hangover of buyer’s remorse.
But it’s not so much the tsunami of fake smiles and overpriced Chinese junk that gets me. No, that’s what fireplaces are for. Catalog season is when Handan takes a keen interest in the arrival of the daily post. Because catalog season is knockoff season: that time of year when Handan gets it in her head that we should be DiYing the entire stock and inventory of stores like Pottery Barn and Grandin Road. You can be sure that catalog season means that yours truly will never see the last southbound goose or the first snowfall, as I’ll be chained to my basement lair, working like an elf on overtime.
With the arrival of Grandin Road’s first Christmas catalog (they feed them into the mail system throughout the holiday season like an intravenous drip to the economy), Handan’s eyeballs pounced on the following “Artisan Packages with Bows.”
Each box is lovingly crafted from the finest scrap wood by starving artisans in the remotest regions of the Guangdong Province on the outskirts of Hong Kong. The price for this artistry: $90 for the small one, $130 for the medium one and $180 for the big one. $180! For a bunch of scrap wood! Jeezum H Crow on a Popsicle Stick! Who buys this stuff?
Handan wanted them. She wanted them NOW. And she wanted them FREE!
Well, if there’s one thing I have in spades, it’s scrap wood. I think I could make one hundred of them without spending a dime. She would make the bows from metal scraps she had leftover from previous projects. It was time to build.
I started by gathering some pallet scraps. Among them, I had some scraps with old red paint. Perfect.
Months ago, I had glued some of the red ones together to make some rustic thing or other. I can’t remember, because I never finished whatever the heck it was I had started. I ran those boards through the table saw to separate the pieces. I did this because I needed to cut all those boards in half by halving the thickness. This isn’t a necessary step with boards of this thickness, but I did it for two reasons:
1) The resulting box would be half the weight.
2) I didn’t have enough red boards to make one box, so I needed to double the wood by slicing them in half.
I ran the boards through my band saw to create new boards of equal length and width, but with half the thickness.
Once I had all my lumber resawed (the term for cutting them in half through the thickness), I cut them to 15 inches. This would be the height of the small box. I played around with the pieces and settled on a width of about 11 1/2 inches.
I arranged the pieces so I would have four equal sides, then glued them together using parallel clamps.
I played around with the panels until I found a sequence I liked. To make the box, I glued and brad-nailed the edges together. Each face would have one overlapping side.
After this box, I made another from some green-painted wood I had in my workshop. I don't have room to post pics here.
Handan dry-brushed the plain wood areas with her homemade chalk paint in white.
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CLICK HERE TO SEE THE BEST DIY CHALK PAINT RECIPE.
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She then made bows.
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CLICK HERE TO HOW SHE MADE THE BOWS FOR THE BOXES - YOU WON'T BELIEVE HOW EASY THEY ARE!
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Head over to our blog for many many more pics (showing the entire process step-by-step)...
...and some more humor!
Hope you liked them!
Thanks for reading.
--Greg
Comments
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They're Gorgeous! You need to sell this at a craft show. Seriously.
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There you go again, being all witty and making stuff I just wanna try next! Lol thank you so much for a good laugh and a good idea!
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Great job!, but one question, where do you store all those things?
Super adorable! What kind of metal do you use for the bows? Especially the rippled bow? Thanks! Merry Christmas!
What a beautiful scene! Are the boxes sturdy enough to sit on, do they have a bottom?