Thankful Neighbor DIY Gift Box Idea Using My Cricut Maker

With the holiday season soon approaching, I feel like I am already in gift mode. I also have been feeling very grateful. Halloween hasn’t even taken place yet, and I am already planning for the future holidays. But today, we aren’t talking about Christmas…I want to focus on the seasons of giving thanks. Thanksgiving. So today I want to share a little neighbor gift idea I created with my handy dandy Cricut Maker. This DIY gift box is so easy to make!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

If you have followed me on Instagram or Facebook, you may have seen some of what our family has currently been going through. My dad was recently in the hospital and underwent a very risky open heart surgery. It has been a bit of a blur and kind of surreal seeing all this happening. What we are good at is pulling together as a family, and as soon as we knew he needed surgery, my husband sent me on my way to stay with my parents while he had surgery. We were able to spend some time together before the surgery, as a “just in case” scenario.

Now fast forward a couple week, my dads surgery was a success! He is now finally home, healing and improving a little bit everyday. Honestly, I couldn’t have gotten through it all without the help and support of some of my closest friends and helpful neighbors. I have been feeling so very thankful to all those that reached out, and helped me or my husband while I was away.

So, it may be a bit out of the ordinary this time of year, but I wanted to create a simple neighbor gift idea that I could give to these wonderful people as a big Thank You! I know we usually think of neighbor gifts as a Christmas thing, and this idea could surely be used for that too! But, I wanted to focus on how Thankful I am for them and what a better time to do it than during the Thanksgiving season.

As with all of my Cricut Maker projects, I put my own spin on the gift, keeping the lines and colors simple and elegant. I tend to lean on the side of less is more. This simple gift box an be decorated and changed up as much as you desire though!

That brings up another thing I wanted to talk about. My Cricut Maker. Less than a year ago, I was given the opportunity to try out the new Cricut Maker and could not have been more scared, thrilled and overwhelmed.

After spending a lot of time with this amazing machine I wanted to share 5 of my favorite things about my Cricut Maker

I can create whatever my heart desires. I love that I can think of a project, and then come up with something real and concrete in Design Space that I can then create using my Cricut Maker. Whether its custom made signs, gift ideas, shirts, hats, to cutting fabric and making items with leather and heavy chipboard its so versatile! I also love that they have an app for the Ipad! It makes creating a breeze. I can be chilling in my bed or watching a movie with the kids and still be creating.

I love the user friendliness of the Cricut Maker and Design Space. I went into these products with absolutely no experience. Cricut made it incredible simple to learn how to use the machines and their design software. There is tutorial on practically everything you may need. Plus, their huge library of ready to make projects, images, fonts, and more make creating what you want a breeze. Did you know you can even get ready to sew patterns for fabric that can be cut on the Cricut Maker? Mind blown. There are 500+ digital sewing patterns and quilt blocks available from Simplicity®, Riley Blake™, and more! Check out Cricut.com for details.

I love that I can change from cutting material, to scoring, to de-bossing and engraving all in one cutting. Its as easy as a prompt from the computer telling you to change out the cutting tool and to resume the cut! Its truly something I have never done before and I think it is so great! This is how I was able to make these neighbor gifts.

Convenience. Some of you may be thinking, what? How is this convenient? I can run to the store and buy the gift boxes I need! Well, not for someone like me who lives an hour and a half from the nearest store that would carry anything like that. Being able to whip up something on my Cricut makes my life so much easier here! Yes, I need to keep materials on hand, but I can easily order things online that can be shipped right to my door in no time.

The versatility of the materials that can be used. I love that I can use my Cricut Maker to cut card stock, vellum, and regular printed paper, along with chipboard, cardboard, basswood, leather, vinyl, fabric and so much more! Having one machine that works for all of this is truly the coolest thing! I love experimenting with different materials and it is so fun making simple things for my kids whether its a project for school or a cute t-shirt that they have been wanting. Using their new Infusible Ink is such a great new way to create some of the coolest shirts, and more!

And with all that, I want to show you how I made this simple and stylish “thankful” neighbor DIY gift box using my Cricut Maker.

If you want, you can watch the full tutorial on this video!

Here is a list of items you will need to make this cute DIY gift box:

I started by designing my DIY gift box on Cricut Design Space. I did design my own box, and then imported it into design space. All the elements are straight from Design Space. I have saved the entire project and you can see the project here and make this yourself!

So, next I cut my box out using my Cricut Maker.

I then fold and glue the box base and top together using hot glue.

Once I glue them together, I cut my “thankful” sign out of chip board and hot glued it to the top of my DIY gift box.

And then its time to fill this gift box with my favorite caramel puffed corn! Get the recipe here!

Its the yummiest treat anyone can get! Again, I really wanted to create something I could give to those around me that I was so “thankful” for. Now, take this idea and make your own! There are countless ways you can create and make it unique to your style!