How I made a DIY decorative box to hide my router for $11

I've moved into a new house and have a lot of things planned and decorating to do!  One of the first things I've wanted to get to is the mantle.  Above it is a recessed box with the cable, power, and other outlets.  I guess in newer builds the cable outlets aren't necessarily finished so this is the only place to plug in the modem and therefore the router.  The modem is small and just hidden behind stuff on the other end of the mantle but the router was more of a challenge.

This is what I started with:

The art canvas was sort of hollow due to the frame, so it works great to just hang over the box with all the outlets.  We had a lot of clutter on the mantle to try and hide the wires but hopefully this DIY makes it look more polished for now.  I saw similar hide-away boxes on Amazon and Etsy in the $50+ range, and at least on Amazon, you didn't have total control over the way the finished product looked.

So, first I went to Tuesday Morning and found a whole shelving unit of fake books.  I bought two, which cost me $11.  I had this project in mind for awhile so I had the measurements of the router in my phone and picked a book slightly wider and taller.  Depth wasn't as much of a concern since I'd be cutting the back off and because the antennas will still stick out of the back.  Then I went home and grabbed a hand saw from the garage and cut off the "back" part of the book that would go over the router:

In my case I just had to cut the two corners and then by bending that piece down I was able to just tear it off.  So now once you swing the lid closed again, you've got a box with an open back slot to slip a router inside...

As you can see, the box is still going to be away from the wall a bit due to the antenna.  This also is a plus if you're worried about the router getting hot.  When I tried this with real books it absolutely got hotter, but as this is more of a box around the router and lighter than a normal book it doesn't seem to get hot so far.  If you're really concerned you could also cut out the sides of your fake book for more air flow.  The smaller book is also a fake hollow book to keep things light.  I stuck a cute flower pot I got at Hobby Lobby ages ago on top but the antennas were still bothering me.

Well, luckily the antennas are flexible, so I just aimed them all more towards the center to hide them.  So far I haven't noticed any signal loss, but if I did I'd first re-position the antennas and if I had to I'd remove this box except when company comes over.

I hope this helps someone out!  My favorite part of DIY stuff is being able to recreate something I want, have it be exactly to my tastes (and/or size if that's a concern), and do it cheaper.

Decorating small gift boxes

I am really bad at wrapping gifts.  I almost always tear the corners and they usually look sloppy. The smaller the box, the harder it is.  This time I just went simple.

Jewelry box + washi tape = simple, cute decoration (and washi tape is easy to remove, making it easy to open, too!).

Not much excitement here, just working on sewing some baby stuff- 4 weeks to go!

3D JOY Display

I am a member of the Silhouette Flickr group and I keep seeing these cute 3D word displays from Needles n Knowledge.  First she did one with the word "Spooky" and then "Thankful."  Her latest is "Joy."  Jodi is very nice and answered several questions I had about her "Thankful" display but I ended up deciding that it was just too long of a word and I felt overwhelmed looking at the cuts.

When I saw her "Joy" display I decided to give that one a try.  Only 3 letters, can't be that bad, right?

All I can say is, Jodi has the patience of a saint.

3D letters are probably my least fun thing to ever assemble.  Especially curved ones like the J and the O.  The Y wasn't too awful.  It's also very time consuming to glue together zig zag edges and wait til they are sturdy enough to glue more zig zag edges, not to mention trying to put pressure on a hollow 3D letter when you are gluing it together...eek!

All 3 letters are from the Sil store (I just searched 3D letters).  I made the J as large as it would fit on a 12x12" page, turning it diagonally to get it even bigger.  The Y was resized to be about 1/2 the J and the box under the Y was meant to be the other half of the J, size-wise, but it came up a little short so I used corrugated cardboard to quickly make a sweater box (maybe?) so it looks like a stack of presents and balances out the J.  The O was sized to match the top half of the Y.

After those were cut, I used the Silhouette Knife Tool to slice all the tabs and stuff off of the letters so I just had a flat J and Y (I don't need the O for this part).  I used the line tool to fill in any missing lines, pattern filled them with the argyle (J) and holly/berry pattern (Y) and used the Print & Cut feature.  I then glued these to the front of the J and the Y.

For the O, I downloaded  a wreath in the Silhouette Store and cut every layer out of print and cut in different shades of green with one layer being a pattern that had berries.  The bow was color filled in red and print & cut at the same time.  I like to stick as much on a sheet as I can when I do print & cut!  I also downloaded a 3D Star, color filled it yellow, and,  you guessed it, print & cut!

The bow and the tree pieces were cut out of green paper (different papers) and the box was cut at the same time I cut the Y, since they both fit on a 12x12 paper.  In fact, the box is from the "BOO" display I made in October!  I just erased the B and voila, plain box.  The base of the tree I filled with a wood pattern and again utilized the print & cut feature.

So...everything is cut.  I already mentioned what a pain in the butt it is to put together these letters.  Here's some in-process photos.  Yes, I gave up and started trying to discretely use tape.

The most noticeable pieces of tape were going to be on the end of the J where the tree rests.  The tree just wouldn't hide it that well. 

I cut a square of that same red paper and used spray glue because at that point I was hating my glue stick.

Not perfect, but this is the angle that looks the worst.

Now I had to figure out how to get the letters stuck together.  Glue was an obvious choice, except you can't put pressure on hollow paper letters.  Both sides of the O had to stick to the J and the Y and it just didn't seem like it would work.

I came up with an idea, and it works very nicely, but it looks completely awful from the back.

Yep.  Paperclips.  Also, I see the glue on the tree isn't dry yet, which reminds me, I totally found that liquid white school glue works VERY nicely when you can't put pressure on something, but it doesn't dry all that fast which can be a problem.

So, about 3.5 hours later, 2 pieces of green paper, 2 pieces of red paper, 1 piece of printable card stock, and some corrugated green cardboard later, we have....

Is it perfect?  No.  Is it real?  100%.  I'm not paid by Silhouette, endorsed by Needles n Knowledge, on any design teams, or anything like that.  I'm just a mom who really, really likes Print & Cut because I never have card stock on hand.  

I may tweak some things, including more branches on the wreath, making the corrugated card board look nicer, and some other minor changes, but on the other hand, I'm kind of done with this sucker now.  

I recommend finding wooden or even the paper mache type letters at craft stores, assuming they have sizing that you like, and decorating those with Silhouette designs.  They will be sturdier and therefore last longer (hopefully) and you won't have to worry about assembling them.

Also, I am looking for recommendations on glue if you make lots of 3D crafts like this!  I have Scotch Crafter's Glue Stick and some 3M Spray Glue, but maybe some of my assembly problems are bad glue choices?  What do you think?