Guest Designer for Frilly and Funkie

Hello Everyone and welcome!

I am absolutely thrilled to be Guest Designer over at Frilly and Funkie today after winning the What A Mesh Challenge back in November. 

I am sharing a project for the current challenge theme which is:

New Year's Inspiration!

At the start of each New Year so many of us make plans and set goals for the future. So for this challenge we want you to create a vintage or shabby chic project depicting what you are inspired to do/achieve in 2017.

My new year resolution for 2017 is to tidy up my craft room as I spend absolutely ages sometimes hunting for something which seems to have been put in such a safe place I cannot find it! As I am always making flowers I have them scattered all over the place without a home, so I decided to alter a box which can sit on the shelf in order that all my handmade blooms are to hand and in one place.

The box is a reasonable size (8.25" x 6.75" x 3.5") so I can store a large quantity of flowers, but the downside was it had quite a large area to cover, given that I was intending to cover both outside and inside. 

I had some lovely Maja Design papers from the Home for the Holidays set but as you will see I was struggling to piece things together by the time I got to finishing the box!

I painted the edges of the box with DecoArt acrylic paint in Raw Sienna. The plastic coating on the box didn't take the paint very well so I think it will rub off in time. But that will all add to the vintage shabby look.

I made sure I had all my papers cut for the outside of the box first starting with the top layer and then cutting the pieces for the sides. The little strips on the bottom of the papers are great for covering up the seams where I needed to piece papers together.

I layered some book paper under the top patterned paper to give it a more shabby vintage look, scrunching up the edges and inking them with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

I layered a lovely vintage photo onto cardstock and added my usual favourites around it! 

One of my handmade blooms (saved from the debris of my craft table!). These are my favourite flowers and generally made using the Tattered Floral die. There are lots of flower tutorials on my blog, either scroll down the sidebar or click the link Flower Tutorials under the header bar.

And then to the inside of the box! As you can see this was really a patchwork effect but I managed to get everything to fit eventually!

And here is the finished box - a little difficult to photograph given the weather conditions here in the north at the moment and it's size!  So far it hasn't moved off my craft desk (the clean side!) but it is great to throw in the flowers as soon as I find them. I am sure it will find a shelf to sit on eventually. 

What it has spurred me on to do is think about how I can make my craft room look pretty with more altered boxes like this - so watch this space, there may be more!

Thank you so much for joining me today and I hope you can find time to join in this wonderful challenge over at Frilly and Funkie.

Jennie x

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