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DIY wooden box handmade gift idea with hot sauce label
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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! 
Active Time30 minutes
Total Time30 minutes
Yield: 1 box
Calories:
Author: Jami Boys

Equipment

  • 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

Other food filler ideas:
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