I think this is my favourite thing I've ever made. I want to make a dozen of them, although what I'd use them for I've no idea! When I was a little girl at Christmas, my sisters and I had taped some Disney Christmas cartoons, one of them was called Toy Tinkers with Donald Duck and Chip n Dale. In the cartoon, Donald dresses as Father Christmas and hands Chip a walnut with a red bow as a Christmas present.
For some unknown reason, that has always stuck with me and it's something I've always thought of. So last year, when I bought my sister a dog tag for her puppy, it seemed the perfect time to make this. I love how it turned out, and I've made a little tutorial for those of you interested in making one yourself, although it is fairly straightforward. I think this would be perfect as a box for an engagement ring!
Walnut Gift Box
You will need:
**Disclaimer: It goes without saying that you need to be very careful with this and the sharp knife as there is potential for injury. This is a craft for adults only**
1. Select your walnut. You want to start sawing at the thicker end, and over a piece of kitchen paper as there will be dust/fragments. There should be a natural groove that runs around the middle of the walnut, you want to saw through this. Position your knife carefully and make a couple of long, slow, strokes at first to kind of embed your knife. You can start to do shorter, faster strokes when you are more confident. It's quite difficult at first but it does become easier and you probably won't need to saw the full length of the walnut. I got to about a third of the way through mine and it kind of popped open, it split all down the seam around the middle.
2. When it has opened, carefully clear out all the walnut from the inside as well as all the papery bits. Eat the walnut and discard the rest with your kitchen paper
3. Using a paintbrush, spread glue all over the inside of the walnut
4. Tip gold glitter into the walnut shell, and swirl it around so it covers all the glue. Leave it for a minute, and then tip out the excess glitter. I'd recommend doing this over a sheet of paper which you have already folded in half and then opened back out, so that it makes tipping the leftover glitter back into the jar extremely easy.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the second half of your walnut, and leave to dry. I left mine for a day but I don't think it needs to be quite this long I just set them aside and came back to them the next day.
6. Pop your gift into one walnut half, and position the second half on top. Tie some red ribbon around the walnut in a pretty bow, fold the ends of the ribbon in half and snip off a triangle with a pair of scissors, and you're done! I was worried about how this was going to work, how it would hold, if it would keep slipping open with just the ribbon and I would need to glue it, then how would it be opened, etc. Actually, the two halves just kind of slotted back together and held firmly when I tied the ribbon around them, so it was fine and it was less awkward than I thought!
As a bonus, you can use the gift box as a tree decoration until it is time to give it to the lucky recipient!
The "if you can read this, I will lick you" dog tag is from etsy here.
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