Teaholder Box

I was originally inspired by another teaholder Instructables located here. I had recently bought a bunch of tea and was looking for some way to store it all so I decided to make a box to hold everything! I have a photo of a teacup on my box but you can always edit that out and add in other photos or words if you'd like! In this post, I expand on my process and the steps I took to create this project!

I ended up making two iterations of my teaholder box with the first one looking very similar to the Instructables post linked above. I'll detail more about my process with the first iteration in the pdf attached but this Instructables will show the steps to recreate the teaholder shown in the photos above. I decided to change the style of the box because I found the back piece of the original teaholder to be difficult to maneuver.

Tools:

- Laser Cutter

- Vector Graphics Program

Materials:

- 1/8 inch thick wood (I used MDF)
- Rubber Mallet

I created the design of this box using the boxes.py flex box 3 maker. I edited the settings using the dimensions that I had from my previous teaholder iteration. Attached will be the files that I edited using the file from boxes.py. The edits that I made in Illustrator included adding the teacup photo to the front of the box and adjusting the line stroke to work for the laser cutter I was using! My first version of this iteration the living hinge at the lid was stretching out a lot and I was worried that over time, it would stop working like it was supposed to or break so I edited the length of the living hinge in the boxes.py maker to the length that it is in the current file.

Download the file and make any adjustments that you would like.

I had leftover 1/8 inch thick MDF that I had bought at my school's makerspace that I used for this project. The MDF was about 12.5inches by 23.5 inches and cost around $5. Settings for laser cutters will vary but I put the settings I used to cut in one of the photos above!

One issue that I ran into when cutting out this file was the teacup and lines didn't cut at the same time. Only the teacup would be engraved and then I wasn't able to cut out the lines. To get around this problem, I just deleted the teacup before I started and cut out the lines first. After that finished, I put the photo of the teacup back in and then only engraved the teacup. You might not run into this issue but if you do, cutting and engraving the two parts separately resolved the problem for me!

Assemble the pieces together using a rubber mallet. I started assembly with the lid first but you can experiment and figure out which order works best for you! After this you're done! Enjoy your new teaholder box :)