This is a present I made for my Dad's girlfriend for Christmas. It's a cheese-serving set! She serves cheese balls and such a lot, so I figured something like this would be useful.
I'll apologize right here for the fuzzy, sucky pictures. I only just barely remembered to get photos of everything and I've been rushed for the past month for just about everything.
http://c.1121.org/crafts/xmas07/box1.jpgThe outside of the finished box. What's in it? Let's see..!
http://c.1121.org/crafts/xmas07/box2.jpgA whole variety of things that are useful when serving cheese! There's some napkins in napkin rings, and what's above them?
http://c.1121.org/crafts/xmas07/box6.jpgA rolled-up napkin! What's in it? Let's see..
http://c.1121.org/crafts/xmas07/box5.jpgCheese knives and spreaders! I made a holder like all the ones I see around Craftster for knitting needles and such. I don't have a sewing machine, so I had to do it all by hand. It took forever and doesn't look the best, but oh well. There's loads of empty spots so she can put in more spreaders, or other utensils or what have you.
Underneath all the napkins..
http://c.1121.org/crafts/xmas07/box3.jpg..is the cheese-serving platter. It's a stone tile with rope handles. The picture stinks so you can't make out the texture of the stone well, but it's sort of uneven yet is still smooth and okay to put food on.
http://c.1121.org/crafts/xmas07/box4.jpgHere's the bottom. The rope is glued on with with some all-purpose sealant, I forget exactly what it is. The rope underneath provides stability and height. Oh, and you can sort of see behind it was our first attempt at making this; we did a first try to make sure we wouldn't mess it up. And in fact our first one had uneven handles and is a little funny looking, but it's okay for just us.
The pile of books were used to hold the tile down onto the rope and glue to make sure the glue got a good solid hold. It's really strong, there's no way the rope is going to come off.
http://c.1121.org/crafts/xmas07/box7.jpgAnd underneath all that is the bottom of the box. XD I mod podged in some maps of Kentucky, which is where the recipient of this gift is from, along with a butterfly. I figured if she didn't want to keep all the serving stuff in the box, she can always use it for something else.
So that's that! Here's a couple of in-progress pictures.
http://c.1121.org/crafts/xmas07/box8.jpgStaining the box.
This is what the box looked like before. It's a combined stain and polyurethane so it came out shiny and smooth. It took three coats before the outside came out smooth. We left the inside at two coats, and it wasn't as smooth but I liked it that way. Also, this is before we put on the hinges and latch.
http://c.1121.org/crafts/xmas07/box9.jpgThis is stained, dried, with hinges and latch attached. Also, it's holding the napkin rings. ^^ I didn't have time to make any napkin rings, so I bought them at the store.
You can also see here how the screws from the hinges poked through the wood a little, which was an unforeseen circumstance. I thought I got small enough hinges and screws, but not quite. If you look in the other pictures, you can see dark brown patches where I glued some felt coverings over the screw nubs so nobody gets their hand scratched up accidentally.
All in all, this project took a LONG time. The staining and sewing took the longest, but there's several hours worth of work in this gift.
