Rustic DIY Wooden Box Gift Idea Filled with Hot Sauces {or whatever…}
Make an easy, rustic DIY wooden box from salvaged materials and fill it with a variety of hot sauces for a truly unique handmade gift for the men in your life. The box can also be filled with whatever your recipient may like: coffee, craft beer, spice rubs – your imagination is the limit! Check out more great gift ideas on the handmade gifts page.
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If you, like me, love to make, give – and receive – handmade gifts you’ll know there’s one thing you can never have enough of: ideas. Gathering ideas is really half the battle. Sometimes it seems like the idea takes longer than the actual gift-making does!
Which is why I’ve run handmade gift challenges for you, gathered 31 handmade gift ideas, and shared a bunch of my own gift ideas. And why you can count on seeing even more ideas like these, including this DIY wooden box easily made from scrap lumber which you can fill with food items like the hot sauce pictured – or other things you’d like.
I think this rustic food box is a great option for men, especially – which is a good thing, since finding any gifts for the men in our lives can be difficult. And being able to make that gift? Well, that’s downright hard. There just aren’t a lot of easy, inexpensive, DIY things men would enjoy that I have found (though I did search and included some in this handmade gift round up).
This easy-to-make gift meets all these critera – in addition to being just plain fun: you gather a collection of food items your guy would like (hot sauces, coffees, snacks, BBQ rubs, etc) and present them in a simple, scrap wood box complete with a personalized label. They get to sample new things, and you get to come off as brilliant. It’s a win-win.
Make a Rustic DIY Wooden Box
Supplies needed:
- Scrap wood (our example used about 32 inches of 1×3’s for sides and 30 inches of 1×2’s for bottom)
- Hand saw-miter box combo or compound miter saw
- Nails & hammer or nail gun (or even drill and screwdriver to use screws)
- Fine grit sand paper
- Two metal cabinet/handle pulls (preferably reclaimed, or new like these) and screws to attach
- Two upholstery tacks to coordinate with handles
- 4-6 varieties of your choice of food items
- shredded paper (I shredded brown kraft paper in our office shredder- newspaper would be good, too)
Instructions:
1. To make the rustic box, cut the scrap 1×3’s into two 10-inch long sides and two 6-inch ends with your chosen saw. This is rustic, so you can decide to have your ends longer than the sides, like the example, or shorter and have the sides go the whole way across. It’s up to you.
2. Nail or screw the shorter end pieces to the sides, being careful to keep everything as square as possible.
3. Cut bottom piece(s) to fit – either three 1×2’s like the example, or a solid scrap piece of plywood and attach to sides.
4. Sand all edges to get rid of splinters and roughness.
5. Attach handles to each side with screws.
6. Print out a label on heavy-weight paper and cut to fit one long side. Copy the example pictured above with Copperplate font or create your own unique look (I thought it was important that it belong only to Jim, so that’s why the “please ask for assistance” was added!).
7. Attach label with upholstery/thumb tacks that coordinate with your handles.
Fill Your DIY Wooden Box
8. Fill the box with shredded paper and then arrange your food items.
You can fill your box with whatever you think your guy will like. In this example, I used four to six different hot sauces. They are varying degrees of hotness and also ethnicity – Asian, Hispanic, Cajun, etc. – for a nice variety. We looked at places like The Dollar Store and World Market in addition to grocery stores to find different, inexpensive sauces. Of course, Amazon also has a good hot sauce selection.
Other food filler ideas:
- small coffee samplers like this selection of organic coffees or this group of custom k-cups
- jars of BBQ spice rubs like this one, this one, and this one with recipe ideas
- sampler of meat jerky
- tea sampler
- snacks like this all natural nut blends
- natural gourmet chocolate candy
- anything you can think of!
We made these “hot sauce bar” boxes for two of our brother-in-law’s birthdays and they were a big hit. So much so that they told us later about all the different things they used the hot sauces for and which they liked best.
A DIY wooden box with food samples are like a gift that keeps on giving long after the day given – and lets your family and friends try new things they may find they love. That’s a great handmade gift, right?
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Rustic DIY Wooden Box Gift Idea Filled with Hot Sauces {or whatever…}
Tools
- Hand saw-miter box combo or compound miter saw
- Nails & hammer or nail gun (or even drill and screwdriver to use screws)
- Fine grit sand paper
Materials
- Scrap wood (our example used about 32 inches of 1×3’s for sides and 30 inches of 1×2’s for bottom)
- 2 metal cabinet/handle pulls (preferably reclaimed, or new like these) and screws to attach
- 2 upholstery tacks to coordinate with handles
- 4-6 varieties of your choice of food items
- shredded paper (I shredded brown kraft paper in our office shredder- newspaper would be good, too)
Instructions
- To make the rustic box, cut the scrap 1×3’s into two 10-inch long sides and two 6-inch ends with your chosen saw. This is rustic, so you can decide to have your ends longer than the sides, like the example, or shorter and have the sides go the whole way across. It’s up to you.
- Nail or screw the shorter end pieces to the sides, being careful to keep everything as square as possible.
- Cut bottom piece(s) to fit – either three 1×2’s like the example, or a solid scrap piece of plywood and attach to sides.
- Sand all edges to get rid of splinters and roughness.
- Attach handles to each side with screws.
- Print out a label on heavy-weight paper and cut to fit one long side. Copy the example pictured above with Copperplate font or create your own unique look (I thought it was important that it belong only to Jim, so that’s why the “please ask for assistance” was added!).
- Attach label with upholstery/thumb tacks that coordinate with your handles.
- Fill the box with shredded paper and then arrange your food items.
- You can fill your box with whatever you think your guy will like. In this example, I used four to six different hot sauces. They are varying degrees of hotness and also ethnicity – Asian, Hispanic, Cajun, etc. – for a nice variety. We looked at places like The Dollar Store and World Market in addition to grocery stores to find different, inexpensive sauces. Of course, Amazon also has a good hot sauce selection.
Notes
- small coffee samplers like this selection of organic coffees or this group of custom k-cups
- jars of BBQ spice rubs like this one, this one, and this one with recipe ideas
- sampler of meat jerky
- tea sampler
- snacks like this all natural nut blends
- natural gourmet chocolate candy
- anything you can think of!
Need more handmade gift ideas? Check out these:
40+ Handmade Gift Ideas for Women and Men
Handmade Gift Ideas for Kids and Teens
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Oh, I’m lovin’ this idea, Jami! I have a son-in-law who is so very hard to find gifts for, and it just so happens he is super crazy for hot sauces or hot ANYTHING…..I made vats full of your salsa recipe, and one of them has habanero peppers in it, just for him! I’m thinking I’ve found his Christmas present for this year! Thanks a bunch
I’m so glad, Sharon – it does sound like it will be perfect for him – as well as that salsa…yum!