How to Make Your Own Christmas Ornament Storage Box
Many families pass down ornaments from generation to generation. These treasures become a part of the collection of family heirlooms. If this applies to you, you need to box your ornaments away so that you protect them from the wear and tear of your yearly Christmas celebrations. Fortunately, you can create boxes that offer protection to your ornaments. The boxes allow you to not only enjoy your ornaments at Christmas time, but also help you take care of them well enough to pass on to future generations.
Instructions
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1
Locate a wine shipping box. These boxes work best for this project, because they are constructed from heavy cardboard and have compartments built into them. Ensure that the boxes you find have not been broken down yet, and that the compartments which kept the wine bottles separated from one another remain intact. Boxes that held bottled beer also work, but the compartments tend to have thinner walls, making them not quite as ideal for this project.
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2
Gather up thick pieces of Styrofoam. Look for flat pieces of Styrofoam that you can cut easily with scissors or gardening shears.
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3
Measure the width of one of the compartments in the wine box. These compartments usually run about three inches by three inches wide. However, double-check your measurements.
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4
Cut dividers from your Styrofoam piece that fit the measurements you just took for the wine compartments. If your measurements determined that each wine compartment measures three inches by three inches, cut three inch by three inch squares plus a little bit extra. These pieces will become the dividers between each ornament. The number of pieces you cut depends on how many ornaments you want to fit and separate in each compartment.
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Wrap your ornaments securely in newspaper.
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Place the first ornament in one of the compartments.
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Stick one of the pieces of Styrofoam snugly on top of where you've placed the ornament without resting it completely on the ornament.
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Repeat the process of packing your ornaments until you've filled the box.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have troubles finding a wine shipping box, call around to the local liquor store, a restaurant that serves wine by the bottle in their bar, or a grocery store that's licensed to sell bottles of wine. Ask them for their wine boxes.
Cardboard wine boxes are sturdily constructed, but don't let that lull you into a false sense of security. While the manufacturers construct them to withstand quite a bit of pressure so that the wine inside is not crushed, given enough force, you can destroy the contents inside them. Use caution when storing the boxes. You'll have better luck with them than with normal boxes, but you still need to exercise common sense; don't put heavier boxes on top of them.
References
- Photo Credit christmas ornaments image by Kathy Burns from Fotolia.com
