Card for a Centenarian–Box for the Card

Having completed the card yesterday, today I worked on embellishing a box for it, as it is too thick for an envelope.

The box was in my stash, and originally contained some samples of stoma supplies! (Nothing goes to waste chez Shosh…)

I painted the bottom, sides and edges of the top with black acrylic paint.

Inside the box, I sprayed it with some pink shimmer spray that I’ve had from when I started papercrafting, many years ago!

I noticed some had got on the bottom of the box and I really liked the effect of it on black (something I’d never tried before) so I ended up spraying the whole thing with it.

I thought the inside needed something a bit extra, so I painted on a thin layer of soft gloss gel medium diluted with water, and sprinkled on some variegated copper gilding flakes, dabbing them into place with the paintbrush.

I wasn’t really happy with it, so I made up a wash of gold acrylic paint with some iridescent medium and painted that on. It was really shimmery but the brush strokes showed more than I wanted, and this was particularly obvious on the lid, unfortunately.

Here’s a detail of the effect. You don’t really get the shimmer from the photo.

In the end, I covered the inside of the lid with some of the paper left over from making the card, first distressing the edges with Evergreen Bough and then Forest Moss Distress Inks. This improved the look of it.

Here is the card in the box. It will be wrapped in tissue paper.

The front of the box completed. As with the card, I added some stickles to the butterfly’s body, and to the centres of the flowers – Holly, and Magenta. In this photo, they still aren’t dry.

I used scraps of the cards and paper used for the card. The circular die cut was one of several in my stash that a friend sent me ages ago. The flowers were more left over from the Floral Mini-Album, and the butterfly is another die cut from the set I used for the card. I used the same two ribbons, and where the “Congratulations” gold card meets the decorative paper, I added a thin strip of gold card from my stash, trimmed when making some other project in the past.

Here is a detail of the floral embellishment.

As with the butterflies on the card, I lifted the wings of this butterfly and secured them in place with a blob of Pinflair gel glue under each one, to stop them being flattened.

Now that the card is fully dry, I can return to it and show you the finished result. Here are a couple of detail photos showing the topper and embellishments.

The sentiment on the inside of the card.

Finally, a photo of the box, the card and the embroidered piece, all for a remarkable lady whose 100th birthday we shall be celebrating with her at her party tomorrow.

I can’t believe I’ve completed this lot in under a week! The trouble is, apart from making bread, that’s all I’ve done this week, and everything else has been neglected!

Final Two Lavender Sachet Boxes

Warning: LOTS of pictures!

Today I had a lovely morning meeting up with my two friends whom I met while we were all in hospital together. We were all very pleasantly surprised to see how well we each looked! Only one of them is undergoing chemo as I am – the other’s cancer was sufficiently confined for her not to need it. The one who is having chemo has the same oncologist as me, and she has her treatments on the Mondays following my Fridays; we are receiving the same infusion and are at the same stage on our journey, so we can compare notes and support each other along the way. Like me, she has had her dose reduced, and is feeling the benefit of that. We had such a lovely chat and laugh together over a cup of coffee, and I gave them the little gifts I had made for them.

I had two lavender sachets remaining from when I made them for my fellow chemo-ites on the day unit, and decided they would be for my two friends, so I needed to make little boxes for them. I am so pleased to be feeling so much better this week, and yesterday I spent the evening in my ARTHaven working on the two boxes, and managed to complete them in time.

Both are made from watercolour paper which is great when you are likely to be using a lot of water, because it is designed to take this level of punishment without disintegrating. It is also heavy enough to make a nice sturdy little box. For both, I used clear embossing as a resist, and different Distress Inks, with a combination of blending with Inkylicious Ink Dusters, blending pads, and smooshing with water, to give a nice random effect.

The Green One

I smooshed the outside and inside of the box using Evergreen Bough distress ink on my non-stick craft sheet, spritzed with water, and pulling the piece through the ink to get a good random effect, drying in between and repeating until I got the result I wanted.

Then I heat-embossed the pieces, using a stamp from my new Chocolate Baroque set called “Harlequin Fragments” using clear embossing powder. I did not put the stamp on an acrylic block but used it unmounted because I didn’t mind it having a less defined look. I stamped once on each of the four flaps.

To bring out the resist, I inked the piece using Pine Needles distress ink.

For the inside, I repeated the process, but this time used silver embossing powder. I chose a stamp from my Floral Doodle Dallions set by Stamp attack for a motif for the centre of the box.

The final step was to distress the edges of the inside and outside of the box, using Forest Moss distress ink and a blending pad. This added a slightly yellower green to the mix because it was too blue and didn’t match the lavender sachet so well.

The finished green box.

The green sachet.

The Blue One

I began by covering the entire surface of the outside with Tumbled Glass distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

The stamps for this were from the Stampin’ Up Papillon Potpourri set. I chose a larger and a smaller butterfly, and again, stamped with Versamark and clear-embossed the images to create a resist. I chose another stamp from the Floral Doodle Dallions set for the centre.

The next colour of ink to be added, again with the Inkylicious Ink Duster, was Salty Ocean.

The final colour was Faded Jeans.

Once this was done, I wasn’t entirely happy with the result, which looked a little flat and boring, so I decided to have some fun with it, and experiment with coarse sea salt. I spritzed the surface well with water until it was very wet, and sprinkled the coarse grains of salt randomly over the surface and left it to stand for a few minutes.

Then I dried it gently with my heat gun, holding it well back so as not to re-melt the embossing, and so that the piece did not curl up and dislodge all the salt grains. I spritzed it again, and repeated the process. This was the result. A lot more interesting, I think you will agree.

For the inside, I again began with Tumbled Glass distress ink, covering the entire surface but not going for too even an effect.

This was followed by patches of Salty Ocean distress ink.

Finally, Faded Jeans. Again, keeping it fairly blotchy.

I then repeated the process with the sea salt.

You get gorgeous swirls and patterns with it, and darker spots around the place where the salt grain was.

To complete the inside of the box, I added some silver gilding flakes, being careful not to cover up all the patterns from the sea salt.

As a finishing touch, I went around the edges of both the inside and the outside of the box with a silver gel marker.

The finished blue box.

The blue sachet. On both sachets I have used little embellishments recycled from other things. In this case, the two little discs of abalone shell came from a cannibalised necklace I bought once at a village fete.

The Two Boxes, Complete

Both my friends were very thrilled with their little gift! For the one having chemo, I slipped one of my lavender chemo cards inside.