Trick OR Treat Box for a fun Halloween!
xTool 4th Anniversary Creative Contest
Instruction
There's nothing like a little fear, a little yum and fun on Halloween. Instead of the usual treat bowl when someone knocks on the door, I designed this for a little more interactivity and fun. Kids can open the box lids for either a trick or a treat... Personally though, I put the trick into the treat side and the treats in the trick side... Fill the treat side with Lollie's, candy, jewelry treats and the trick side with fake spiders, eyeball candy, snakes, or even rig up a jack in the box creepy spring toy for when they pop it open. The fun is unlimited!
Pretty please like and bookmark this project!!! I would love a Co2 lazer one day, because then I could cut light colored acrylics... Black on black is not as fun as it could have been, imagine if I could make my projects pop with Halloween orange or green with white!!!
Design info: This box is simply a double hinged door box I designed myself to close seamlessly, and the lid will sit perfectly on the center. If you like you can glue a magnet inside the lid to make the doors harder to open. The box I designed here can be used for other purposes if you change the engraved and cut decorations (like a boys and girls lucky dip box etc.) For Halloween, I've created a fun Halloween design composition using the XTool Design Space free images, to show that ANYONE can design a unique and fun box using the tools provided by the program and not spending any money except on materials. The Halloween design you see here is made simply by resizing the free images in XTool Design Space, placing them strategically and welding them together where they overlap. You can design your own easily, just like I did... <3 <3 <3
The base box design is my design and I give you permission to use it as you like, the Halloween themed engraving and cut design is not my original artwork, but the free images found in design space and you can create your own version if you don't like mine ;) Anyone can do it with the free images found in the Creative Space. Or just use my fun composition simply because it's cute! <3
This is just the usual setup steps…
01a. Download the files and open your lazer program ;)
01b. Position your materials on the lazer machine. 300x600 sized materials work best for this project, the box width is just under 300cm so it fits that material perfectly with very little scrap material remaining.
01c. Decide if you're making an engraved box or a cut box (the example I made uses the cut files only, not the engraved file. It's either or, not both. If you engrave on your box, don't use the cut file and vice-a-vers-a. XTool Creative Space now uses canvases and I've placed the file parts for each cut on the canvases for easy select and go. If you aren't using the engrave file, select the engravings and stop output and if you're using the engrave file, don't cut the last 2 canvas cut files.
01d. Frame the project on your material sheet to ensure minimum wastage and start your cutting or cutting and engraving.
Notes: My cutting of the box frame and box details took 2hours and 27 minutes to cut all parts.
02a. Cut the box parts and remove the protective film on the Inside of your box parts… for those with matt black on one side and glossy on the other, remove the film on the glossy side, leaving the film on the matt black side. Remove the film on both sides of the 2 center square parts.
02b. Take the 2 Center pieces (far left parts on the bottom first image). Glue them to eachother and then glue them into the base center part (see second image example)
02c. Take the front and back long pieces and glue them into the base and base center as shown in image 3.
02d. Add the Lid Parts into the loop hole hinges on the front and back parts you just glued. This makes the lid <3
02e. Glue in the side squares, they should slot nicely into place, completing the box part. Remove the outer film now, it would have protected your box from the glue residue while making it, but now it's no longer needed. :)
Box Assembly Complete
Note: The design file includes little box re-enforcement rods. These are 3mm wide sticks that are the length of the box insides and are used to glue inside the seams of the box joins inside each box side. This simple rod installation and glueing may not seem like much, however it re-enforces the strength of your box joints and can make your box more durable when loading it full of heavier items… I prefer to glue in these re=enforcement sticks while glueing the box together and have found they make the box much stronger, however the box functions just great without them too!
03a. Make sure all the protective film is removed from the box and start removing the protective film from the back of the cutout details.
03b. Glue the cutout details onto the box sides, front, back and lid until it matches the images.
03c. Once all the little Halloween Decorations are in place, remove the protective film from it. The front protective film would have kept the tiny parts safe from glue residue while glueing, but that's not needed anymore.
03d. Finished! Fill the Trick side with Lollie's, candy, chocolate or shiny jewelry treats and fill the Treat side with spiders, snakes and creepy crawly things! Or you can be honest and put treats in the treats side and tricks in the trick side, but I like to be sneaky and switch it up ;)
Notes: These fun Halloween details are mostly taken from the free XTool Creative space shape image bank… so you can add or change whatever you like… Have a whole day free? do what I did and create your own creepy crawly version of this Halloween box! It's amazing what fun you can have designing just using the tools available to you. Remember to weld, group and resize things to fit <3 Doing activities like this helps your compositional awareness and is a great foundation for when you later design things from scratch yourself.