Faux Stained Glass Box Made From Recycled CDs

Upcycling is a wonderful way to give discarded everyday items a second life, preventing waste while creating something genuinely beautiful. In this project, I transformed old, forgotten compact discs—objects that usually end up gathering dust or in landfills—into a stunning faux stained-glass keepsake box.

Looking at the finished piece, nobody would ever guess that most of its surface area is made from old recycled CDs! To keep this project as eco-conscious as possible, I designed it so that the 3D printed components were kept to a minimum, letting the upcycled CDs do all the heavy lifting.

After taking measurements of the CDs, I modeled a frame in Autodesk Inventor designed to hold each disc and fill out the outer corners to make them square. I then arrayed this section four times in a 360-degree circular pattern to establish the overall square geometry of the box.

I included four holes on the underside of the base frame. In a separate file, I modeled small spheres with flattened top and bottom surfaces to serve as raised feet for the box.

I added small circular indentations into the frame model to fit decorative "diamond" rhinestone stickers I had bought, giving them a dedicated space to sit flush.

I modeled the top lid frame structure to fit seamlessly over the main body of the box.

I really didn't want the CDs to look like old CDs in the final piece! Beyond painting them like stained glass, I designed small 3D-printable flowers to mount in the center of each disc, as well as a custom knob to serve as the lid handle.

I set the rhinestone stickers into the recessed circular sockets on the printed frame. Since I didn't fully trust the original adhesive on the stickers, I added a small drop of nail glue to each socket before pressing the gems into place.

After printing the small decorative flowers, I glued matching rhinestone stickers into the center of each one.

I attached a rhinestone gem to the top of the lid handle and placed another inside its lower section for added detail.

I glued the four 3D-printed feet into the sockets on the bottom of the main box frame using nail glue.

I discovered online that certain CDs allow you to strip off their foil labeling layer simply using heavy-duty adhesive tape! I tested my old CDs to see if they were this type, and happily, they were. I repeated this tape-stripping process on 6 CDs.

After peeling off the backing, a thin greenish residue remained on the CDs. I wiped them down with a cotton pad soaked in WD-40, which easily dissolved the film, leaving the plastic crystal clear.

I placed each clear CD over a printed mandala design that I had previously drawn in Adobe Illustrator. Using thick, dimensional stained-glass outliner paint, I traced the design onto the CD surfaces and let them dry completely. (I completed this on 5 of the CDs, leaving 1 completely clear to serve as the bottom base since it won't be visible from underneath).

I mixed clear UV resin with resin color pigments and carefully filled in each framed cell of the mandala artwork. I cured the resin in stages using a UV lamp until all sections were filled and hardened.

I applied a few more rhinestone stickers onto the stained-glass CDs and used nail glue to attach the 3D-printed center flowers over the central CD holes.

For the bottom of the box, I glued the unpainted clear CD into the base frame using nail glue and attached a small printed disc in the center to cover its middle hole. Even though I could have 3D-printed a solid base, I chose this approach to minimize plastic usage and print time while maximizing the upcycled content.

I glued each of the four finished stained-glass CDs into the side frames of the main box body.

After gluing the top stained-glass CD and the 3D-printed handle onto the lid frame, I reinforced the handle attachment by applying a bit of extra UV resin to the underside around the joint and cured it under the UV lamp.

Here is the completed box! I've decided to use mine to organize my embroidery threads. I am so happy with how it turned out—I finally put those old CDs to good use, and almost nobody can guess that the majority of this elegant box was made from discarded trash!

Happy making!