Box for Floral Mini-Album–Beginning to Work on the Insides

After not being able to spend time in my studio recently, this evening I managed a couple of hours, and made some progress with the construction of the two boxes. We are seeing our friend early next month and I would like to get her box finished by then, even if I don’t manage to finish mine, so that she can keep her copy of the album in it, rather than in the biscuit tin in which it currently resides!

This evening I cut the pieces for the second box, from mount board as before. I had already disassembled the mock-up box because it is going to be much easier to embellish the inside when it’s in bits, and I wasn’t happy with the way I’d assembled it, just using masking tape.

I have painted the insides of each piece with black acrylic paint, using a foam brush. I laid them out on newspaper on my studio floor to dry.

While they were drying, I started work on some decorations for the inside of the boxes.

A while back, my friend gave me some lovely table napkins that she’d picked up in a restaurant she’d visited, and thought I might be able to use them.

They are rather thick, and not made in layers like most table napkins, so I couldn’t separate them. I decided to tear out the borders.

I also tore out the little pianos.

I inked the strips with Worn Lipstick and Dusty Concord Distress stains, spritzing the ink on my craft sheet and dabbing with a big soft brush, and then spritzing the strips to blend the colours a bit better, and then drying them with my heat gun.

I am intending to tear them into shorter, random lengths and stick them down onto the black painted mount board pieces after I’ve decorated these with Distress Oxides – I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do that yet but it may be a combination of applying the Distress Oxides with a blending pad and spritzing, and some stamping. I want the whole effect to be fairly subtle.

I have ordered some metal hardware from Ebay, for embellishing the outside of the boxes – corners, clasps, handles and feet, which I hope will give the boxes a nice professional finish.