Transcript:
Today, there is romance in the air, and this next project is a great project that she can make for him. Right, and our project is thoughtful, it's masculine, and it's practical, too. We're gonna start with a wooden box from our local craft store, a map, some decoupage medium, some stain, scissors and some other miscellaneous craft supplies, and a little bit of fabric. What makes a gift special is the fact that it has special meaning for you and the person you're giving it to. For example, my husband and i spent our honeymoon in sicily, so a map of sicily was the perfect addition to this map chest. Now mom, that's very sentimental and very sweet, but i know that there's also a practicality idea behind this box. You're absolutely right. Her whole plan here is to hopefully prevent my father from the clutter. And when i say "the clutter," i'm talking the keys, the watches, golf tees, change... All those things that they lay down on the counter, or on the top of your dresser... All those things are gonna fit perfectly, neatly tucked away... And neatly tucked away inside. So the first step was to find our box -- pick one out -- and this was a great size... And find the map, remember? Yes, of course, find our map. And she used sicily, but you could always use, like, the hometown, maybe, that somebody grew up in, or you could even do their favorite hiking trails... Really, anything you wanted to do on the top of it. Okay, the next step is to stain it. Now we're going to be covering the top of it with our map, so we just wanna come in... And i'm working with a stain that has, like, a polyurethane mixed with the stain, so it goes on nice and smooth. It's kind of a gel, and as opposed to most stains -- where you put them on and wipe them off -- with this one we're using a brush, and we're just gonna brush it onto it. (sloan) you can still wipe it, though, if you want -- if you wanna do it kind of a lighter finish. Right, if you wanna see the grain of the wood more, you might wanna just kind of wipe off some of it, and make sure you put it on nice and smooth. Go ahead and do all of the sides, and don't forget to do the bottom of it, as well. That just makes the gift have more of a finished look to it. Now comes the fun part -- doing the top of our box. We're gonna be working with a decoupage medium, and here i've cut our map out. Now you're going to notice that there are the lines from the map. Now you could leave those in there, or, you could start to kind of think, "how could i get rid of those?" well, we tried ironing, we tried a few different things, and my best solution was to ahead and just crumple it up. Now just press it really nice and hard. You really wanna get some nice creases in there, because i'm gonna show you a little secret. It also added dimension to our map by highlighting the mountainous regions and also the water. You're gonna go ahead and smooth it down, nice and flat. Then you're gonna take your decoupage medium, and start to apply it to your box lid... And go ahead and press your map down. Now i just kind of centered it, and you'll notice that i have an overhang. Go ahead and leave that. Sometimes papers can shrink up a little bit when they get wet, and to prevent that from being too small on top of our surface, we decided to leave the overhang. You would go ahead and flatten this out... Now before you put your final coatings on, you wanna go ahead and flip your box over, and take a craft knife and just trim right along the edge, and trim off the excess. Then you're gonna come back with your decoupage material, and do a good couple of coats -- maybe three or four, actually -- to get it nice and smooth and to have a nice, solid seal over the top of it. You allow that to dry, and once that sets up, you're gonna come back with a kind of topcoat satin spray. Give it a really good once-over along the sides and the top of your box, and then it's time to fill the inside of our box. That's right. Now you wanna make sure, on the inside... You know, when you finish, it's just raw wood. So we decided that it would be nice to take some canvas because we sailed around that island, and the canvas is really reminiscent of sailcloth. Then you're just gonna come in with hot glue, put it around the edges of your box -- around this edge. We measured this first, then we turned it under, pressed it down nice and flat... And then, sloan, if you'll grab the other end of that for me... And we just placed it right into the box, like this. (sloan) you could use velvet for a dressier look, or you could even paint it or stain the inside of it, if you wanted to. (vicki) write a love message inside, wouldn't that be special. (sloan) that would be romantic. Okay, then you wanna do the bottom exactly like we did the top of it, and you'll be absolutely the hit of the next romantic gift occasion.