By: Chris Stead and Rebecca Davis

This month Rebecca was talking to me and telling me that she realizes that lots of Goths have a ton of jewelry. With this in mind, they need some place to store it. Personally I am guilty of being particularly bad about how I store my silver. So, the solution is, of course, a jewelry box! This one takes some prep and a little bit of forethought, so it’s probably best to give yourself a bit of time to gather everything that you will need for the project.

Necessary items are as follows:

• 1 wooden cigar box
• 1 screwdriver with a small end
• 1 can of spray glue, I recommend Super 77 from 3M
• Paint, probably spray-paint, for the base color
• Acrylic paint for any design you want to put on the box
• Paint brushes
• Velvet to line the inside of the box
• Fabric to line the top of the box

Before I start into directions on how to do this, I would like to state that we put a mirror in the top of the box. This ended up being too thick, so lining the top of the box with fabric will undoubtedly work out better.

1. First remove all of the hardware from the box.
2. Sand all of the wooden parts down. Most cigar boxes will have a varnish on them that is difficult to paint on.
3. Now paint your box the base color that you had chosen. We decided on black.
4. Once the paint has dried, measure the inside of the box and all of the channels where the cigars were once held, and trim your fabric to fit.
5. Use the spray adhesive to fix the fabric into place.
6. Embellish the outside with anything that you would like. We used a stencil
7. Finally screw the whole thing back together.

Once everything is dry and in place you can start putting jewelry in your new box! Assuming that you used basic spray paint and acrylic paint, your jewelry box will be ready to use within about an hour of putting everything together. Enjoy!