MAGIC the Gathering Deck Box With 3D Embellishments

Intro: MAGIC the Gathering Deck Box With 3D Embellishments

This box for Magic the Gathering cards can be altered for any type of playing cards. It's a good gift for Christmas or birthdays for both the young, and the young at heart. And most of the materials you probably have laying around the house!

Materials:

-wooden box

-thick cardboard (I used cardboard from a packing box)

-felt

-hot glue gun

-acrylic paint in desired colours

-paintbrushes

STEP 1: Design the Front of the Box

With a pencil carefully sketch your design or logos. When you are confident with the logo, paint over it with acrylic paint.

STEP 2: The Top Cover

Now for the fun part!

Again in pencil, sketch the design or logo you want to appear on the top cover of the box. Do not include fine details or lines too close together as we will be tracing the logos with hot glue. Simple logos work the best, as pictured the logos from the MAGIC game, or card suits (hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds) would work great.

When you are happy with the design, trace over the lines with the hot glue gun. Work slowly, as the glue can be hard to control.

TIP: you can use the tip of the glue gun to smooth edges of your lines. Press the tip against the hot glue on the box (without pulling the trigger, so no new glue comes out) to smooth and reshape.

When the glue has hardened completely, paint the entire lid of the box in your background colour (I used chocolate brown). The paint will not stick easily to the glue, THIS IS OK. Make sure to paint overtop of all of the glue anyways.

When the background paint has dried, take a secondary colour that will stand out against the background (I used silver). Using a fine paintbrush, paint over the glue to make the symbols stand out. The paint should stick to the glue, because of the layer of paint already on it. To smooth the hot glue design, feel free to not paint over mistakes. If there is a part of the design you want to disappear, simply paint it over with the background colour and it will be hardly noticeable.

STEP 3: The Deck Slots

Measure the size of the cards that will be held in the box. Add 2 cm to this number. This is how big the slots should be.

Mark the box in pencil where the dividers should go. There are many ways to do this, and the space may not divide evenly. I allocated space for three decks at the top of the box, and left larger spaces at the bottom. Larger spaces are fine, and will make taking the cards out of the box easier.

TIP: If a space is too small for a deck of cards, thats ok! Use it to store dice, markers, or other gaming accessories. I divided one of my deck spots for this purpose.

Cut cardboard into strips that are at least 1/2 cm smaller than the height of the bottom of the box. Cut these strips to the right length to use as your dividers. Cut felt so it can wrap around cardboard and secure in place with hot glue.

Secure felt to the bottom of the box using hot glue. For each divider, use hot glue to trace along the bottom of the box where the dividers will go. Then apply hot glue to the ends of the dividers and secure in place.

Comments

[gilbequick]

Great work, very thoughtful of you!

[maryhammy]

Thanks gilbequick! My brother loved it, so it was totally worth it :)

[DIY Hacks and How Tos]

That looks great. This is probably the best DIY card box that I have seen yet. The type symbols add a really nice touch.

[maryhammy]

Thanks Jason! It was really fun to make as well :)