Altered Boxes Part 1

For the upcoming church exhibition and sale in our village, I have decided to put in some altered boxes as well as my mirrors and flower paintings in the small Ikea frames (these are now finished but I haven’t photographed them yet). At the recent craft show I bought a number of boxes for altering, which I have primed with water-based white decorating primer. I’m making a start on some of the small boxes:

because they should be relatively quick to do. For the first one, I have taken some rather bright pink scrapbooking paper and painted a section of it with the new Tim Holtz Picket Fence Distress Stain that I bought at the craft show, to soften the colour slightly, and to give it a weathered, chalky look.

I cut a narrow strip to go around the box, and tried the lid, which wouldn’t fit over the box plus the paper, so I put the lid on the box and drew round the box, to show me the upper limit to which I could cover the box.

The strip for the box was cut about 1 1/4 inches deep, so that I could fold the excess underneath the bottom of the box. I cut another strip for the lid, this time 1 inch deep.

The colour of the paper wasn’t quite right for the roses I’ve got (left over from another project) so I lightly inked it with Scattered Straw Distress Ink, using an ink duster. This had an unexpected result – the Picket Fence Distress Stain acted as a slight resist, emphasising the streaky appearance, which is actually quite pleasing.

Then I stamped the two strips with a swirl stamp (from the Stamp Barn – I got this at the craft show) using Versamark, and heat embossed them with gold embossing powder.

To finish them off, I distressed the edges with some Victorian Velvet Distress Ink, using an ink duster.

The inside of the box and lid I painted with a couple of coats of black gesso, continuing down the outside of the box to the line I drew,  marking the position of the lid.

After this I dry-brushed a little gold acrylic paint over the black, using a small flat brush, and making small random brush strokes. The effect I wanted to achieve was the inside of Chinese lacquer boxes.

Here’s a detailed shot of the inside of the lid.

By snipping the excess paper diagonally, close to the base of the box and the top of the lid, I was able to fold the resulting tabs over and stick them down. They were anchored down firmly by the discs on the top and bottom of the box.

I used my Martha Stewart Circle Cutter to cut two circles from the pink scrapbook paper for the top and bottom of the box, and a circle from gold mirror card to mat and layer for the lid. Finally, I hot glued two pink roses and a couple of leaves onto the lid to embellish the box. Here is the final result.

I’ve done this one in an evening. Hopefully I’ll get plenty more done in the next week or so. I’ve got lots of ideas for different styles.