Seaside Gift Boxes with Eileen Hull Designs

Two blog tutorials in one year? I'll need a lie down 😁! As I mentioned in the previous post these days I share tutorials over on Facebook, Instagram and my YouTube channel but this is something of a throwback one so I'm going 'old school'.

First shown back in 2019, this is an idea for creating seaside inspired gift boxes using one of Eileen Hull Designs Scoreboards Dies. It's perfect for using up some of those special little shells and pebbles you may have brought back from a trip to the beach.

This one is mainly about how to achieve that weathered wood effect on matboard using paints, though you could just as easily use patterned paper glued onto the matboard to achieve a similar effect if you find that better. Just remember to cover both sides of the board.

For the painted version start with an uneven coat of a sand colour. Any matte acrylics will do for this project.

Use a more 'well used' paintbrush to drag some pale blue paint over the top.

Now go in with even less of a pale sage colour - you'll find using less paint each time gets you more natural, blended look.

Go gently with this next stage! Add a few delicate wisps of dark brown paint to suggest an uneven grain you get with weathered wood.

Finally use a white paint/gesso sparingly as your last coat to tie all those subtle colours together and add to that aged look. And remember to paint both sides of your matboard.

Painting (or paper) done, it's on to cutting your gift boxes. Eileen has cleverly designed the Stacking Drawers Scoreboards Die to do all the heavy lifting here - it cuts the draw sides, base and box wrap all in one pass, including all the scoring!

With everything painted/covered both sides and all the cutting and scoring done it's a simple matter of sticking together the drawer/base and doing the same for the box wrap as shown below. I would suggest gluing the rectangular base on the inside of the drawer to make it easier to slide inside the finished box wrap.

Finally I added some permanent brown ink to all the edges for that vintage look but that is purely a preference thing so you may want to leave this stage out.

Decorate the top of your box wrap with shells, pebbles, metal charms, die cut leaves, bits of burlap netting and even drops of molten gold embossing powder - again this totally down to preference and also which treasures you may have to hand. Don't forget to fill your boxes too with golden toffees, clotted cream fudge or other treats to bring a smile to the recipient's face.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing how these seaside inspired gift boxes came together. The die is still available over in Eileen's Etsy Store HERE.

Thanks for visiting,

Jenny xxx