DIY Wood Shadow Boxes from Old Desk Drawers

Today I have a fairly easy DIY craft project for you and you can have them completed in just one afternoon. What’s really nice about this project is that you’ll be upcycling (recycling) old wooden desk drawers or small kitchen cabinet drawers. Once you’ve converted them…you can turn them into wooden shadow boxes to display your treasures on your wall.

* This post contains affiliate links.

For this project we used 2 small wooden desk drawers that were made out of pine wood. Hubby stripped them, sanded them and then painted them. After the paint was dry, he roughed them up with some sandpaper to give them that shabby chic look. You can remove the knobs or leave them on. I opted to leave them on.

Since I wanted mine turned into curio boxes or shadow boxes I had him cut pine wood to fit inside them to make divided compartments. After a little bit of measuring, sawing and painting…he had my compartments made. Each of our drawers now have 6 cubbie holes or compartments. On the back he added a saw tooth hanger, so that we could hang them up on the wall.

What’s really cool is that you can decide if you want to hang them horizontally or vertically. I opted for horizontal look so that they would look appropriate beside a canvas wall hanging on one of my kitchen walls. To keep them from tilting I added a little piece of double-sided foam sticky tape to the bottom of each one. Once he had them up on the wall and straight…just push the bottom edge down to tack them down firmly into place. This keeps them perfectly straight!

I had a small collection of coastal themed salt & pepper shakers, seashells and other small items to display. Finally got those items out of a cabinet and out for people to see. As the seasons change, I’ll be changing out my treasures and doing seasonal displays inside them. During the holiday & Christmas season I plan on displaying some of my coastal themed ornaments in the cubbie holes.

If you have some old wooden drawers lying around this would be a fun project to do. We’re going to make another set and hang them above a desk in our den. That set will be used to organize and store desk & office supplies. You can use them for all sorts of different things!!!

* This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, we may or may not receive a small commission which helps to support this site. Thank you!