When Lucas Rabbit saw his sister Zoe Rabbit's painted storage trunk, he admired it so, and thought he would like something similar. He asked his friends Juliette and Max to help him make a box for his toys. It had to be big, because Lucas has a lot of toys.

Max said, "Maybe this empty box would work! It's from my collections. For some reason it has the name of our Village on it!"

Lucas thought the box was big enough, but he asked if it could be red, because that is his favorite color. So Juliette got some red paint, and the friends painted the box and box lid.

Then they decorated the inside of the box. Max cut pieces of paper that were the same size as the sides of the box.

Lucas drew pictures of his favorite toys on the paper.

Then, Juliette pasted the paper into the box. She was careful to paste down all the edges very well. She used her quaint glue bottle. We would probably use a glue stick for this.

After the paint and glue dried, the friends attached the lid to the box. They cut into the box lid like this.

Then they glued the bendy part of the lid to the box, like this. They used wood glue.

They used some rubber bands to hold the box together while it dried. 

Meanwhile, Juliette painted the lid of the toy box. "See that, Pummy?" she said. "It says T...O...Y...S. That spells 'toys.'" Juliette messed up the "T" a little bit so it looked too much like a "J." But once the black ink dried, Lucas painted that part red again. Good as new!

 Finally, the toy box was ready! Lucas put in his toys. His house was much tidier.

Also, sometimes he likes to hide in there. Silly guy!

Here is another storage box we made. 

It has a beautiful tissue paper lining, which looks like sunlight coming through the forest canopy!

If you want to make your own decorated box, you can use any shoe box or similar cardboard box. You can decorate the outside and inside with any combination of paint, markers, and pasted decorations. We learned that it's definitely easier if you decorate the box and lid separately before trying to attach them together.