Making a jewellery box - protection and lining

Question

My wife has a lot of her jewellery in various small boxes, bags, etc, which makes it hard for her to find a particular item she wants to wear. I'd like to make her a nice box to keep it all organised, as a surprise present for her.

As an engineer, I'm happy with how to make a box - what I'm not so sure of is how to line the compartments in order to protect the jewellery properly - a lot of it is hand-made and non-metallic, so isn't as strong or resilient as mass-produced silver or gold would be.

What materials could I use for this? I can't ask her as I want it to be a surprise!

Answer 1

The normal way to do this is to use something soft inside the box to provide impact protection (usually foam), and then a layer of something over the foam to provide a more durable, scratch free and better looking surface (usually velvet). Velvet is also popular because it is less slippery than other options, so pieces don't slide around inside the box as much.

Often the foam is skipped - velvet provides some impact protection because of its depth, so especially if it's not something that's expected to be moved then you can get away without the foam - but if you're concerned about the durability of the pieces then extra padding is the way to go.