What can you make from wooden clementine boxes? I designed a craft called a lenticular photo display using the triangular wood shapes from clementine boxes. Check out this simple but visually striking craft, along with many other ideas on my Trashmagination Pinterest board for clementine boxes.

You can listen to my podcast episode on creative reuse of clementine boxes in this YouTube video. It originally aired in July 2018.

Photos of my Lenticular Photo Display from Clementine Boxes

See it from multiple angles to get the full effect!

Spice Rack Made from Clementine Box Panels

After this episode went live, I received an email from Vicky Kirkland. She wanted to know where to get the cute boxes featured because she didn’t have boxes like that near her. She had named her Shasta camping trailer “Clementine,” and she wanted to make a spice rack from the boxes. So I mailed her some panels. She made this awesome design in one day!

Decorating Ideas to Make with Clementine Boxes

• Chalkboard-Paint Placecards – The blog Family Chic showed how to take the triangle shapes and paint them with chalkboard paint. Then they can be used as placecards on the dining room table.
• Tiny Chalkboard Signage – You can paint the flat pieces of the clementine box with chalkboard paint and attach string or ribbon to make little signs. This can be show instructions at a potluck dinner table or it can be a gift tag on a bottle of wine.
• Shadow Boxes – A shadow box allows you to frame three-dimensional items. The blog Pop Sugar made a shadow box by painting a clementine box with gold paint. They filled it with a magical winter scene made with cotton batting, tiny evergreen trees and white lights.
• Gift Boxes – Clementine boxes can be a great way to put together “kits” for friends or teachers. For example, you could put all the ingredients to make a cocktail. Or cleaning items for a housewarming gift. Or baby items for a baby shower. You can paint the box in a color that matches the gift items. Or you can use Mod Podge to decorate the box with scrapbook paper. When people come to visit, fill a clementine box with items they might need and store it in your guest room. Another gift idea is to wrap up the triangles from clementine boxes as kindling for someone who has a fireplace or who likes to go camping.

Storage Items to Make with Clementine Boxes

• Ribbon storage – By adding dowels, some crafters store ribbons in clementine boxes. You can roll out what you need.
• Scissor Storage Box – Turn the box upside down and drill a hole big enough to let your scissors slide in. This could be especially helpful for a teacher or scrapbooker who has many shapes of scissor blades.
• Add handles – A blog called Homestead and Gardens gave a clementine box a big upgrade by adding two dowels at each end to make nice handles.
• Add burlap – If you want to creatively reuse your burlap rice bags, you can cover clementine boxes with burlap.
• Shelves – I saw a LOT of examples of clementine boxes as shelves. Often this involved painting the bottom of the box in bright colors and putting them up as a collection.
• Desk Organizers – Clementine boxes can stack on top of each other. You can take out one side of the box to make a file organizer. Or you can stack them and paint a word on the side to show what goes inside the box. They can be used to hold fruits and vegetables which do better outside of the fridge such as tomatoes, onions, melons and potatoes.
• Greenhouse – You can grow plants in clementine boxes. Some people add a plastic canopy to make it more like a greenhouse, but many plants grow well without it.

Toy Ideas from Clementine Boxes

• Doll Bed – Back in episode 34, I talked about making dollhouse furniture from recycled materials. A clementine box makes a great doll bed because it fits most dolls. Sew a little mattress, quilt and pillow, and the box already looks like a four-poster bed. You could even add a canopy.
• Doll Couch
• Doll Table – Turn a clementine box upside down to make a doll-sized table. You can paint it or cover it with a tablecloth. You can even make little place mats as a family craft.
• Toy Car Storage Center – Put toilet paper rolls into a clementine box until it is completely full. Then your child can put a car into each little parking spot [].
• Color sorting game – Turn a box upside down and circle the holes in the base with different colors of marker. The kids drop tiny pompoms or beads into the holes that matched the color using chopsticks.
• Ring toss game – Put bottles in a clementine box and people throw a ring to see they could get it around the bottle.

Show Details

• Script for this podcast episode about ways to creatively reuse clementine boxes or crates (not a transcript but gives the main ideas)
• The Trashmagination podcast theme music is Kitchen from the Marian Circle Drum Brigade.