Keepsake Box

Hello to all my fellow bloggers. I hope you are all well and managing to get plenty of creative time to yourself. I can’t believe how this year is flying by and we are now in April. The most exciting month of the year so far for me, as I am this months Guest Designer at Cheery Lynn Designs. 

Todays project is a Keepsake box that I intend to keep little memories my children made or gave me as they were growing up. I started with coating my plain wooden box with a coat of gesso inside and out  to seal it. I then applied various colours of paint blending and applying to my box with a baby wipe. Finally. stamping script and crackles onto it also with paint.

For the top of my box I cut out the French Lattice Small Frame die x 2 with kraft card. I then dry brushed some paint over it to give a shabby feel. I sliced a section off both cut outs so they would connect together at the right size for the top of my box. I saved the small shapes, these were distressed and stamped with crackles. This gave me a contrast when I paper pieced them back onto the lid. I cut out my flourish and again distressed the edges and applied to the lid with multi medium. I then edged with Cuties 3 strip around the edge of the box.

The centre piece I wanted to give a look of petals  wrapped delicately around my topper. I die cut the Cuties 3 strip with kraft card and edged with distress. I then pressed my embossing tool into the centre of the petals to give texture and put a tiny little cut into the strip with my scissors, this makes the paper more pliable to go around the topper with ease and makes the petals sit perfectly. I layered 2 rows around the centre.

I love making my corner dies  look like a metal embellishment. To do this, I firstly cut out with kraft card and double embossed with a metallic copper embossing powder. If you heat from underneath and you will get a smoother finish. The base of the box is supported with wooden beads I painted. 

Now lets go inside my keepsake box. By luck the sections were able to come out, enabling me to stamp them and distress around the edges. My back section I used patterned paper adding glitter paste through a stencil. I also glued on some more little bits from my lattice frame die and edged with the Cuties strip. I used various stamps on my background too.

I used the Expandables Tiny Borders strip into my little sections. This is an amazing die, that gives you lots of different decorative strips all at once and the length is only determined by the size of the piece of paper you use, as it has little markers on the die to expand it. Clever !!

Finally adding all  my various embellishments and a peice of pink felt to the base inside.

Well I hope you have enjoyed my post as much as I have had in making it and feel inspired to enter this weeks challenge at Cheery Lynn Designs which is Back to Nature or  theme changes on Sunday to Anything Goes.

Hope you have a creative weekend,

 Julie x 

Shop at Cheery Lynn for: 

FRM132 French Lattice Small Frame Die
B165 Lace Corner Deco
EDL151 Victorian Romance Flourish
B215 Expandable Tiny Borders
B387 Tiny Fanciful Flourish Left and Right
B339 Gardenia Strip
FRM135 Swedish Spring Oval Frame
B151 Cuties 3
B179 Iris Leaves

I would like to enter this into:

Crafty Little Fairies - Vintage/Shabby Chic

Ecletic Paperie - Challenge Wood

The Artistic Stamper - Embossing and Texture

That's Crafty Challenge Blog - You Spin Me Right Round

Stamping Sensations - Dies and/or Punches Challenge