Christmas Is Not Over!
- Do you celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas?
- Do you know what 12th Night is?
Surprise your friends and family with 12th Night Gifts. These treasure chests are made of card stock and sealed with a lock that I cut from vinyl on my Cricut. I used vinyl I get for free since I had a color that was a perfect color for these lock stickers.
What is 12th Night?
Many people assume that the 12 Days of Christmas end with Christmas Day. This is incorrect. The 12 Days of Christmas START on Christmas (depending on which religion you follow) and end on January 5 or 6 (again, depending on which religious calendar you follow).
There are several websites that provide details about the 12th Night calendar, its history and origins. My post is not about those details. This post is about making gifts for 12th Night.
Traditionally, 12th Night gifts are items that can be eaten. An organization I belong to does 12th Night events every year. They are mostly social events and includes gift-giving throughout the day. When I was trying to come up with a post for this week, I thought about 12th Night and what I could give as gifts to everyone.
I came up with the idea of making little wooden chests made out of card stock sheets that were pre-printed with a wood grain, then fill them with candies. The chests are then “locked” with a vinyl sticker in the shape of a key hole.
Materials and Supplies
- Wood-grain card stock or heavy paper (1 sheet per “chest”) – 8-1/2″ x 11″ minimum
- Metallic-look vinyl
- Patterns from my Resource Library
- Treats
Cutting the Chests
Cutting by Hand
The PDF in my resource library contains the pattern for the chest. You can print the design onto 8-1/2″ x 11″ paper and transfer the design to your card stock for hand cutting. Some of the lines are “score lines” instead of cut lines. Scoring the lines before folding will give you crisper folds.
If you do not want to hand-cut the locks from vinyl, you can use a piece of clear tape or any decorative sticker. You do not have to use anything at all but you will want to make sure you pack them so that they do not get over-turned in transport to your 12th Night celebration.
Cutting with Craft Machine
Upload the .SVG from my resource library to the design application for your craft machine. If your machine does not do scoring, remove those score lines (they are all grouped together) before cutting then score them manually after cutting. If your machine will score paper, convert the score lines from cuts to scores in your design application.
If you find a paper that has a wood grain printed on it, make sure you set the wood grain to run horizontally across your cutting mat.
For the locks, upload the .SVG from my resource library (it is included in the same ZIP file as the file to cut the chests) and cut from a metallic-looking vinyl or whatever “sticky” product works best for you.
Assembly
After your boxes are cut and scored, fold along all the score lines, folding toward the inside of the chest.
Glue the one side tab to the inside of the chest.
When the glue has set, turn the chest over so you can work on the bottom.
Fold in the long notched section
Fold in each of the two short notched sections so that the points of the notches tuck in under the long notched section
Tuck the final bottom tab into the gap
Adjust until it is sitting nice and square
Turn the chest so that it is sitting upright on your work surface. Depending on what you will put into the chest, you may want to consider adding a piece of tape on the inside of the bottom flaps to hold them together.
Fill the chests with your 12th Night treats. I am using wrapped candies as my 12th Night treats this year.
There are two top flaps: a short one in the front with a slot cut into it and a long one in the back with a tab.
Fold in the short flap in the front so that it lies across the top of the treats.
Fold in the long flap (the one that has a rounded tab at the end) and tuck the tab into the slot
To keep the content secure, apply the vinyl key-hole lock.
Ready for 12th Night Gifting!
Make as many chests as you need for your 12th Night gifting and enjoy the smiles as people “unlock” their treasure chests to enjoy the treats.
You can get FREE ACCESS to the patterns for all my DIY and craft projects in my Resource Library by signing up for my weekly newsletter. This is how I let you know about each new craft or DIY project that I do.
Remember to pin this to your favorite crafting board on Pinterest!
Select From All My DIY Boxes
I enjoy making little handmade boxes for gifts and treats. You can try some from this list of all the DIY boxes I have made:
- Square Paper Boxes
- Paper Treasure Chests
- Cupcake Boxes
- Heart Boxes (one of my most popular!)
- Shamrock Boxes
- Woven Paper Baskets
- Easter Bunny Boxes
- Kentucky Derby Party Favor Boxes
- Cinco de Mayo Mini Piñatas
I hope you have fun making more of these adorable gift boxes!