Box for Floral Mini-Album–Completing the Inside Pieces

Today I finished embellishing the insides of the pieces to make up the box.

I had a bit of a struggle because at each stage I was far from satisfied, and kept adding more layers until it looked more or less OK. Here are the steps.

First of all, I tore the music fragments from the paper napkins into smaller pieces, and stuck them down onto the box pieces with soft matt gel medium.

They looked far too obvious and there was nothing to link them together. I added more Worn Lipstick and Seedless Preserves Distress Oxides and spritzed it lightly with water, and dried it with my heat gun. Before and after:

It still needed something to link the fragments together so I stamped some music onto the pieces without an acrylic block in order to get a nice random effect.

I still wasn’t pleased with it. The stamping was too hard looking and it just looked messy. I added some Vintage Photo Distress Ink with an Inkylicious Ink Duster which improved things somewhat, especially after I’d spritzed it with water again. On the following photos, it looks as if the music stamping has disappeared, but it is still there, but a lot more subtle, merging into the backgrouond.

I finally decided to add some white acrylic paint spatters and this definitely helped produce the effect I was after.

Coming back later after they were dry, I decided to make them a bit more subtle by adding some Black Soot Distress Oxide with an ink blender. I spritzed it lightly with water and then dried it with my heat gun. Again, before and after:

The finished pieces.

The final step was to touch up the edges and the borders on the outside of the pieces with black acrylic, and when they were dry, I gave all the pieces the heavy books treatment overnight to ensure that the pieces would be absolutely flat, and ready to be assembled into the two boxes.

I was hoping that my metal embellishments would arrive today from Ebay. I may have to wait until next week. At least I can begin assembling the box in the meantime, but I cannot finish the outside until they arrive because I need to cut the covering papers to shape, to fit around them and give a nice professional finish.