Decorated Book Box

I'm honoured to be a guest DT again at Creative Artiste Mixed media Challenge for this month. The theme is always anything goes with mixed media and today I'm sharing another A5 book box that I have decorated for a birthday gift, one of my favourite things that I enjoy doing. 

I used one of Gecko Galz beautiful images from their blog for the front of my box and gave the box a coat of white gesso before using one of Stamperia's stencils with texture paste to create the design for my box.

I also added texture paste down the edge of the box and created the faux book pages. When dry, the edge of the box was painted in a buff acrylic paint.

I chose to paint the outside of the box with this blue pearl paint from Pebeo which is a more turquoise shade, I thought would compliment the image on my box really well.  When dry, I added a touch of gold wax over the stencilled areas of the box.

I then added a few metal embellishments with a little gel medium and didn't think it needed any more on this particular project.  The inside of the box has also been painted with gold metallic paint.

Gecko Galz also have loads of inspiration on their blog along with challenges to enter and free images to download to craft with.  Pop over to their page follow and subscribe to their monthly newsletter.

I enjoy decorating these types of boxes, they come in very handy and make nice gifts too.

Don't forget to drop by Creative Artiste's blog challenge there are some amazing projects and fabulous inspiration on their blog and links to their DT for you  to follow.

Perhaps think about adding your project and sharing your love of craft, just follow the link below.

Have a great day,  whatever you have planned for yourself and fab weekend to come too!

Happy Crafting

Challenges:

Creative Fingers - AG

Creative Inspiration - AG

Stencil Fun -shades of blue

Allys Angels - AG

Crafts Galore - AG  DT Favourite

Creatalicious - AG

Through the Purple Haze - AG

Love to Craft - AG

Love to Scrap AG

Earth Queen Shadow Box Frame

I'm really excited to be a guest for this month's challenge over at Creative Artiste Mixed media Challenge.  The theme is always anything goes with mixed media so decided that that my shadow box frame would be a good project to share with you all.

There is a lot that I really like about this Magic Forest collection from Stamperia and  in particular the Earth Queen mold. I am still quite a novice with mixed media and gradually building up my stash so tend to use whatever I have in my stash to compete my projects, with a bit of experimenting along the way.

I finally found a use for a 6 x 6 inch wood box frame that I had bought a few years ago and decided to make a paper mache textured base for my box using torn up tissue and pva glue. I then added lots of texture to resemble tree bark with a pokey tool. I thought this would give me  a more rustic base rather than texture paste and its cheaper too!

Once dry I planned to paint it first with black gesso and then with burnt sienna acrylic paint, leaving a hint of the black to show through.

I also experimented with colouring my air dry clay.  The closet colour that I had in my stash to a skintone ish colour was Pebeo studio acrylics paint in buff, and it worked out fine (although its not a great picture). This saved me having to worry about a streaky face and it did look a lot better when I added some highlighter blusher all over (that I no longer use) to add some tone.

Being a very slow crafter these days the painting of the Earth Queen mould was probably what took me the longest to finish purely because I use a very fine paintbrush as I find it easier to paint with less mistakes and do a section at a time. I also used burnt sienna acrylic paint for her hair too and LuminArte H20  watercolour paint in gold for her hair band.

I painted my leaves with Stamperia Allegro paint in avocado, adding a touch of  ocra acrylic mixed into the centres for more tone and then edged them with Art Alchemy antique brilliance lucky emerald wax. I love using wax, it really brings out the detail in your projects.

I used part of one of the rice papers from the Magic Forest collection on the base of the frame and used Art Alchemy rusty brown matt wax, a little antique gold wax and patina antiquing paste wax on the jewelled piece at the front to finish my frame off.

I have really enjoyed creating this shadow box frame and hope join the in the challenge this month too.  There are some amazing projects and inspiration over on the blog to follow too every month.

Have a fab week, whatever you have planned for yourself

Happy crafting