Patriotic Craft Utensil Holders

Hosting summer barbecue’s seem to be a pretty standard thing for our family. I love how casual dining outdoors can be, but I also like making the tables cute. These patriotic craft utensil boxes are made of wood, so they will last for a long time. The boxes have lids, to they could also be used as home decor when they aren’t being used to corral cutlery.

Supplies needed to make your own patriotic craft boxes:

• Unfinished Wood Craft Box with Lid (3)
• Rusted Tin Stars (4 packages)
• Red Craft Paint
• White Craft Paint
• Blue Craft Paint
• Core’dinations Sand It Gadget
• Tim Holtz Brown Distress Spray Stain
• Painter’s Tape
• Silver Spray Paint

Paint the rustic stars and the wooden box lids with silver spray paint. Set aside to fully dry.

Paint two of the wooden boxes white, and the remaining third box blue.

This will probably require a couple of coats of paint to get full coverage. Allow to completely dry. Set the blue box aside.

Using a ruler and pencil, mark 1″ stripes on your white boxes running horizontally. The top stripe will be just slightly short of a full inch.

Mask off your red stripes with painter’s tape. Follow the pencil lines with your tape along the top and bottom of the stripe.

Here is a trick that will get you really straight paint lines, without any bleeding. Using your white paint, paint over the tape lines where you will be painting the red stripes. Make sure to get the paint up to the tape, and if there are any slight gaps, get the white paint in there really good.

Allow the white paint to dry.

Now paint your red paint. This took me two coats to get a nice deep red color.

Carefully pull your tape up while the second coat of red paint is still wet.

Continue until all the tape is removed.

See the beautiful crisp lines? Any potential bleeding underneath the tape was made with the coat of white paint!

Allow the stripes to dry.

Meanwhile, sand the blue box, especially on the edges and corners where normal wear would be.

When the striped boxes are dry, sand them too.

Using a cloth, rub a light layer of wood stain over all three boxes to give them a distressed look. This will also seal the wood.

Allow the stain to dry.

Using a glue gun, adhere the metal stars to the blue box, in the center- making sure to leave room at the top and the bottom of the patriotic craft box for the lid to fit.

That’s it! You can use these patriotic craft boxes with the lids on the top for storage:

or open with the lids at the bottom, to dispense utensils.

However you decide to use them, I know these patriotic craft boxes will quickly become a summer decor favorite!

For even more DIY patriotic inspiration, check out these 4th of July crafts yo yo candle wraps!

Shaunte

Shaunte is a 30-something, chocolate-loving, SAHM from Utah. She has been scrapbooking since 1997, the dreaded era of photos cropped with deco scissors. Since then, her work has evolved into a clean, linear, photo-focused style. Her favorite subjects to scrap are her husband and five kids (never a lack for subject material there).