Make Your Own Cake Gift Box

Every wedding I have ever been to used a birdcake or mailbox to hold gift cards. These two holders are readily available pre-made at arts and crafts stores for around $50. This blog will show you how to make something very different and original for even less than the pre made solutions. Specifically, a gift holder that looks like a wedding cake.

Here's what you'll need:

• three hat boxes of varying size (large, medium, and small). You can use a different number, but through much experimenting I found a three tier gift box cake is the optimal size.
• White contact paper to quickly cover the design on the hat boxes
• fabric - I used a fabric shower curtain from walmart. One shower curtain was $10 and was enough fabric to cover all three boxes.
• hot glue
• utility knife
• duct tape
• binder clips
• finishing touches such as ribon and beads

First cover all three hat boxes, including the lids with the white contact paper to cover up the designs on the boxes. This will prevent any bleed through of the design through the finished fabric. Once everthing is covered, it is a good time to cut the needed holes in the boxes. First on the lids, the largest lid doesn't need a hole, but the medium and smallest lids get square holes slighly smaller than the largest square that fits within the smallest lid. For the holes in the boxes themselves, the largest and medium box should get this same sized square hold and the smallest box just a slit big enough for an evelope. I suggest this slit is at least 1/4" wide.

With everything cut, you can begin assembling. First, cover the lid lips with some ribbon. In my design I used three ribbons. First, a very thick white ribbon that I started attaching inside the lid and folded around the outside. Next I installed a brown ribbon right around the base of each lid. I topped this all off with a very thin sheer pink ribbon. All of these ribbons are simply hot glued onto the contact paper covered lids.

Next step is to cover the boxes in fabric. To do this I cut a square big enough to cover the boxes and then started taping the edges to the inside of the boxes two points at a time with duct tape. This will result in a pleating effect with a very nice finish.

Finally, you are ready for assemply. Binder clips work great for this. Place your biggest lid down first, follwed by your biggest box. Binder clip the medium lid to the largest box with 8 clips around the square you cut. Then place the medium box in the medium lid and repeat this process all the way up the cake.

You may also want to add some finishing touches after the cake is assembled. I placed a string of beads between each tier in my design.

Your guests will love this cake gift box and it can be designed for any party, wedding, bar or mat mitvah, or sweet sixteen.

If you make your own cake gift box I would love to see the pictures. Please e-mail them to mike at liebtech.com. Also feel free to e-mail me if you have any pictures of mine.
More wedding and party ideas on perfect wedding wiki