The Story Of The Wooden Boxes

Hi Folks,
Since I sold my business Soapier.com, I needed a new outlet for my creative urges. I've always been drawn to thrift stores, garage sales, etc... looking for that item that has seen its day and wants to be reborn into something new. My brain seems to gravitate towards that type of creating. I can't help myself. I see something that is, and then I think about what it could be. Thus, the story of the wooden boxes.

After having a business that sold specifically through the internet, I decided that I wanted a change of pace and get the opportunity to do displays (I love displaying merchandise), and get to meet customers in person. Not wanting to commit to selling every day, the outdoor shows seemed to be the best fit. So, I needed a display... something that would really showcase my wares and draw customers into my booth. I decided on wooden boxes as my display pieces. I could gussy them up a bit to look really cool. I did a fast check on craigslist to see if I could score some (some being what, 4 or 5?) and don't you just know it, a guy was selling these pine boxes originally used for shipping ammo. Yeah. Ammo. They were the perfect size, had a top for each box and the guy had over 40 of them at $5 each.  The wheels start turning.

Pictured here is 7 of the 20

Here's were my idea of needing display pieces vacates my brain and that creative part I told you about starts to take over. I wanted all of them, yeah, 40 boxes, but lucky for me (and my wallet), they only had 20 at their home. So I was off to get 20 pine ammo boxes. It was a 40 minute drive to pick them up. Get there, pack them up in the jeep, and then I'm starting to have some thoughts, the "DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE HECK YOU ARE DOING?" kind of thoughts.

So I'm already in this mode of thinking when my overly active imagination gets started, and it's not pretty when that happens and I start wondering as I'm driving with the very strong smell of raw pine permeating my nostrils, if it could be possible that there are bugs in the boxes. Like those not so nice bugs. Anxiety and panic start to take hold of me and now I'm speeding down the highway, 40 minutes from home and I keep looking over my shoulder praying that there are no bugs, please no bugs. Bad enough worrying about the bugs when I start to indulged in a personal attack by shaking my head and saying out loud "What the hell were you thinking?" Look over my shoulder, then attack, over shoulder, attack. You get the picture, right?

Here's the removable top

Could it be that I'm a bit overly dramatic? Nahhh. It turned out okay. There were no bugs and I think my ideas for the boxes will be pretty great.

I'll have to sand down all the rough edges and then the tops will end up being wall hangings with some funky image in the middle. I'll want to do a chippy/shabby paint technique on both the boxes and the tops. Being I have 20 of them, I'll do them up a bit differently and using colors like off white with some brown, brown and white and black with reds.  Images to adhere to the tops might be some French inspired, or Victorian... I haven't decided yet.

As I get them done I'll do an update of my progress and you'll have to let me know what you think. Oh yeah... should I go back and get the 20 more? They are waiting to hear from me.

After all is said and done I do consider this a great find!  I'm still on the look out for display pieces.

Linda