Altered box

I altered this sturdy cardboard box - which is about 5 inches by 5 inches - to turn it from a plain brown box into something slightly more attractive.

I used light moulding paste and a stencil which I bought from Crafty Notions to create the raised design.


Once dry, I sprayed the whole box with a variety of colourwash sprays - Radiant Rains, Crafty Notions sprays, Sticky Fingers Sprays and some from Outside the Margins in the US. Once that was all dry, I added colour to the raised areas using several colours of Treasure Gold.



To finish It off, I lined the box with velvet paper,
which I bought from Marco's in the US.

Altered Element Upcycle

My purple pack of pure pleasure arrived from the Altered Element last week - each item is beautifully wrapped in brown paper bags and purple tissue, and it always feels like opening Christmas presents!

This month's Upcycle element was a very old booklet of sheet music, and I did use some of it in the hanging ATCs in the last blog post, but I also used it more obviously to create this little heart box.

I cut the sheet music and glued it to the box with gel medium - I like to use this because it is 'drier' than glue and tends not to make the paper bubble when adding it to a solid surface. Once adhered and trimmed, I painted a fabric flower, the rim of the lid, and the interior of the lid and box with Radiant Rain in Jasper Red. I gave the whole box a coat of acrylic wax to give it some protection, and added the flower with a tiny brad.

Christmas presents

I have been busy making 24 Christmas presents for the 12 days of Christmas swap on CC Swaps yahoo group.

I won't spoil the surprise for the recipients by posting pictures of what I made, but I was so pleased with the way they looked when I'd finished wrapping them (never my strong point LOL) that I thought I'd share that here.

For the smaller presents, I sprayed mulberry or silk papers with colourwash sprays, and for the larger flatter gifts, I crumpled brown paper up then sprayed each sheet with 3 colours of Radiant Rain. A quick handmade tag and tied it all up with soem interesting balck yarn to add drama. I hope the recipients realise that the wrapping is part of the gift, to be used in their art!

Doodling

Doodled all over this ATC for a swap on
CC Swaps - it was quite fun - I used to
do this kind of wiggly doodling
(called rosetti work) with an
icing bag and tube,
all over cakes,
to give texture!

The background is the paper that lined
my 'spraying box' and caught all the overspill
from any Radiant Rain, Color Mists,
Sticky Fingers colourwashes
or other sprays. It looks so pretty
that I have lined the box with new paper,
and cut this up to use as backgrounds!

Radiant rain experiments

If you spray the radiant rain lightly, it works like any other colorwash spray, but with more intense & colourful glimmer. The mica has been coloured to match the ink, which is why it is more intense. The piece on the left was sprayed lightly with copper, and a blue.


If you spray the Radiant Rain more generously, especially on less absorbent surfaces, it 'clumps' together, and creates the effect you can see on both samples with a dark background.

The top one was done with Interference Gold on black glossy cardstock.

The next peice down was a mixture of Interference Violet (top), Interference Red (middle) & Interference Blue (bottom) on black satin cardstock. The Interference Red looks more like gold to me.

The final piece was Jasper red, oversprayed with bronze, on matte textured white cardstock.

Radiant Rain

I am in LOVE!!! I ordered all the Radiant Rain sprays from Fran the Frantic Stamper. I was confident that as Zeborah loved them so much, I would too LOL. I have studiously ignored them for DAYS as I was concentrating on Teesha, but today I had a little play! The interference colours are great on black glossy, and the shimmer of the colours on white glossy and matte is fabulous. By accident, I doscovered something interesting. I laid textured kitchen paper towel under the sheets I was spraying, to catch the 'extra'.

I noticed that with the Red Jasper spray, it seemed as if the red was staying on the raised areas, but the more condensed areas seemed to be showing bronze. So, I took a couple of fresh sheets of kitchen towel off the roll, and sprayed away... and as you can see, you get a 2-tone effect which reminds me of the flock wallpaper you used to see everywhere in the 1970s LOL. I must try this with other colours to see what happens!