I hope you all did some Christmas shopping this weekend! Or some Christmas Gift Making or Pinned some awesome projects to make in the near future. There were some great projects linked up this weekend and lots of CIJ sales at Etsy shopes. I hope you’ll take some time to look through the links. I love supporting local artists and mom’s and women.
Today’s tutorial is brought to you by: Jaime from That’s my Letter.
Jaime is a talented builder. She’s built some very large built-ins and furniture pieces (that you can see here) as well as created lots of cute crafty kids of things. Check out here blog for more on that. For now, here is her tutorial for how to build a trug. I had to look it up. It’s a wooden caddy, as you can see. Here’s Jaime!
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I built a trug.
A tool trug, a book trug, a utensil trug. Anything goes.
But in this case it’s more than likely a toy trug.
The open concave curve actually makes the trug much more user friendly than the caddy.
Here’s how I made it:
1. Using 3/8″ plywood cut pieces:
2 sides: 7″h x 12″l
2 ends: 8″w x 12″h
2. Draw curve on end pieces.
(I used a plastic container top.)
3. Draw curve at top.
4. Use jigsaw to cut out curved parts:
5. Drill handle holes in end pieces.
I used 3/4″ dowel for the handle therefore a 3/4″ circular bit:
6. Construct. Pre-drill nail holes on ends to avoid splitting the side pieces:
7. Glue and nail, I used 1″ panel nails:
8. Cut your bottom piece out of 1/4″ plywood. Glue and nail to bottom using 3/8″ nails:
9. Slide handle into holes, mark about 1/4″ in from end pieces for dowel stopper holes:
10. Drill 1/4″ hole through handle at both ends for 1/4″ dowel stopper piece.
11. Paint. I choose to leave the interior natural and paint the exterior and handle two coats Behr signature blue.
12. Monogram.
Print out lettering (I used American typewriter font), position, trace letters with ballpoint pen leaving a slight indent in wood.
13. Paint inside indent.
14. Seal with Minwax clear satin poly.
Use and enjoy.
Detail of distressed edges:
This is a gift for our neighbor, hope he enjoys it!
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Thanks Jaime. I especially like this picture. It shows how much stuff you could cram in your trug, which would make your trug both a gift– and a gift package!
Tags: Building Stuff, Gift Ideas
Thanks Sandra, makes for a great day. Can you tell my son is obsessed with Captain America?
Not a bad role model!
Great tutorial on this project. Think I will pop on over to your site and check it out…..Thanks
These are great. And so easy to customize for different people. I never thought to use the little dowel stopper thing!
Love this idea for toting things around. Now to give the directions to hubby, ’cause I don’t do wood, yet! (LOL)
I like the unpainted natural wood on the inside. Great project!
Too cute, love the bright blue too!
Megan
This is really cute, we might be making some of these for the kids in our family for Christmas!
If I don’t have access to any type of tools will someplace like home depot or lowes cut pieces like that for me?
In my experience, the big box stores will cut down a sheet of lumber and maybe make a few length cuts on “stick” material but they will not do any kind of shaping cuts with a jigsaw.
Do you think it would still work to drill the (handle) holes on the outside of the edges and use cotter pins as stoppers? I am not familiar with dowel stoppers, so that’s the first thing that came to my mind…
My son’s a Bear Cub Scout and this might make a great (simple) tool box!
My husband has cut out two trugs from your great pattern. Easter gifts for our grandsons..now to put them together and paint. Where did you find the American typewriter font to trace onto the trugs, and how did you enlarge to suit the project? Thanks for sharing, and for your help.