Wedding DIY Love Letter Wine Box Wood Burning

 When I first met my husband, he had a 3 slot wine bottle box that he'd gotten from a winery somewhere. I think it used to say Savannah. We kept the box when we moved and when I told him about alternate unity ceremonies for our wedding, he was really interested in the love letter wine box ceremony. I looked online for boxes and was shocked at the prices. I don't know how to carve, but I had the idea to do wood burning/etching on the box. I knew that I wanted the back to be our monogram theme that had been everywhere in the wedding. Although I designed the logo, hand drawing it would have been a disaster.

I printed out a large letter size copy of my monogram. Now obviously I can't see through the box to trace so I had to make my transfer by shading the back of the monogram. 

 It's best if you have charcoal, but a good drawing pencil can do the job as well. Shade the entire back (well only the parts that have the shape you want to transfer).

Using a pen or pencil, trace the outline of the image onto the wood. Then use the wood burner to trace your outline and burn the design into the wood. Make sure to cover areas you want to be darker and keep the heat lighter on the areas you want to shade lighter. 

 For the front of the box he had a family crest that I thought would be perfect. I also wanted our initials on each door and behind each door would be the glass for when we open the box.

 The method is the same as was done to the back. Print out the image, shade the back and trace.

The main difference between the front and back was that the front had color to it. I used color pencils to color in between the line and used a piece of tissue to rub in and even out the color.

My baby installed two locks on the front before the wedding day. We each got a set of each key for safe keeping. I should put that in the safe.

Here's the box opened.

 You can see the opened box at the end of aisle. Our mothers walked in the glasses and placed them on our respective sides. Within the week leading up to the wedding, we each wrote our letter to one another and after the preacher performed the ceremony, we placed them in the box without reading. We changed up the tradition slightly by adding that we want to do a recurring wine box every 5 years.

It currently sits at the top of one of our book cases in the study.