Wallpapered Wine Crate

I collected a trio of wine crates last fall and, for no apparent reason, I've not started turning them into amazing shadowboxes until now. I'm lucky enough to live about a block away from two of Dallas' trendiest wine bars (though I haven't ventured into Crush to beg for castoff winecrates just yet) and getting the wine crates was pretty easy. The man who runs Chateau Wine Market seems to keep stacks and stacks of crates around the store and he let me take my pick of some pretty exotic looking crates. The one pictured above has a lovely French brand on one side.
This is a sneak peak of how the shadowbox will look when it's finished. The "walls" have yet to be papered with this retro 70's lounge paper I bought at Old Navy (of all places to get funky paper??) a couple of years ago when it was sold as gift wrap. I bought the Nubian Prince (or so I'm calling him) at an antiques shop over the weekend. He's really cool. The bottom of the bust says he was made by Margaret in 1954. Other than that, he's a pretty anonymous fellow, though I very much admire his choice of headware.
I got the idea from the DIY section of designsponge (the bestest design blog out there, for my two cents). In their instructions, they recomment you carefully measure the inside walls/back of the wine crate and cut your paper to fit. I decided to take the back of the crate off so that no part of the wooden crate would show through and to minimize the wrinkles of the paper. It turns out that removing the back of a wine crate isn't a tough chore at all (though you will have lots to sweep or vacuum up when you've finished, the wood likes to split into delightful flying splinters!). I'm sure my neighbors will love it when I re-install the backs of the crates and add the hanging hardware so that my shadow boxes can live on the dining room wall.