Repurpose and upcycle your iPhone box

Don’t recycle all those old boxes, upcycle them instead!

Repurposing items is often forgotten about when it’s so easy to go out and buy everything new these days. But I love the feeling of accomplishment and ingenuity when I can figure out a way to repurpose and upcycle. It’s a great way to reuse items, make them beautiful again, and give them a better purpose in life. Consumer packaging comes in some really sturdy and functional boxes that are actually as good as anything you could buy in the store. There are so many things you could do with a small cardboard box. So instead of recycling them, I decided to pretty up my old iPhone boxes and iPad boxes.

It’s a great way to reuse items, make them beautiful again, and give them a better purpose in life.

Supplies needed:

• A glue stick
• Scissors
• Craft paper in any pattern or shade you’d like to use
• Your decorating spirit and a good attitude!
• Empty cardboard boxes – this can be anything from an old electronics box, food box, subscription box, Amazon shipping box and so on.

This isn’t a step-by-step tutorial by any means. Just be creative, try out different layering techniques and let yourself experiment!

TIP: If you have extra materials, I recommend testing out on a couple of boxes before using your favourite sheets of paper. Youtube is great for watching tips and tricks on how to cut and fold your strips as needed.

Example 1: Organizing the junk drawer

Reusing these boxes means I can get better organized. With the iPhone and iPad boxes, I separated the bottoms and lids from one another. I chose to only decorate a few sides of each box with paper as some sections are already white with no branding. These helped turn my junk drawer around into neat and orderly storage so I can find stuff in my kitchen.

TIP: Decorate only the sections of the box that you will see such as the inside bottom – this can help save on paper and effort if you don’t end up seeing the other sides anyways.

Example 2: Creating a sewing kit

You wouldn’t think that dessert cakes need to come in such a fancy box, but I was glad to find a way to reuse it. The opening flap has a magnetic enclosure which keeps it sealed quite nicely. With a little glue and cutting, I was able to incorporate two different sheet styles to turn this cake box into my new sewing storage kit.

TIP: Plan out your paper sections as much as possible before you start cutting and gluing! This way you will know if you have the right coverage and that the folds will over all edges and sections.

Example 3: DIY cardboard box storage

On a trip to San Francisco, I stopped at Mr. Holmes Bakehouse and picked up a ton of delicious baked goods. I loved the box so much that I brought it home with me! There was a bit of grease staining the cardboard so I figured I could reuse it, decorate it and turn it into a storage box as well as a memento of my trip to San Fran.

TIP: Where possible, try to unfold the box to glue in your paper patterns. This makes it easier to work on a flat surface so you can probably wrap around corners and edges.

You can use your boxes for anything from storing crafts, creating shelf dividers, use for organization or decorate the box to give as a gift box.

How do you like to reuse and get crafty with items in your home? Post a comment below or tweet me @heyseto.