Creating Inside and Outside the Box for A Vintage Journey

Hello everyone and welcome!

As it is the first Friday of the month (and the year!) it is time to start a new challenge at A Vintage Journey and this month we are thinking both inside and/or outside the box!

Deb is our host this month and she is challenging us to 

CREATE WITH A BOX

Any box of any size will do. It can be one you made yourself or one that you are recycling or even one that you have drawn. Make your project either inside the box itself or do something imaginative on the outside or both if that's where your muse takes you. As always we like to see projects in our preferred styles: vintage, shabby; mixed media; art journaling; industrial, timeworn or steampunk. So put on your thinking caps and reimagine those boxes both inside and out.

Quite a few boxes have been looking at me over the last few weeks but I just didn't have any inspiration. Then ....... Christmas morning I discovered that my lovely son had bought me a fabulous selection of goodies from Stampers Grove in Edinburgh (he lives just around the corner!) including a little box frame and some Victorian pictures (and lots of other wonderful things too). Just perfect for Deb's challenge!

I decided to alter the outside frame of the box by adding lots of scrunched layers of torn up kitchen roll which I added with multi medium. It does give a lovely texture, if a little messy!

I added some clusters of metal embellishments and flowers which then got a coat of gesso.

I then sprayed everything with these Mists from 13Arts - Pastel Cinnamon and Pastel Antique Cream.

While that was drying I turned to the box itself. I wanted to keep it quite shabby and so added some tissue paper (also in my present!) and shabbied it up with a light coat of gesso and a little brown ink around the edges.

The box was then assembled and I used some more gesso and gold paint to highlight some of the embellishments in the clusters. I also added a few micro beads too.

Whilst clearing out some drawers in the back bedroom before Christmas I found an old pearl necklace belonging to my mother in law which was all in pieces. I decided to rethread a few beads and include it in the box as I thought it went so well with the lovely Victorian photograph. There is also a little bit of lace in there too on the muslin.

The box is quite deep so everything does nestle in quite nicely.

So .... thank you Robin for a lovely Christmas present! and one which allowed me to decorate both inside and outside the box.

I do so hope you will be able to join in our challenge. If you need more inspiration then do hop on over to A Vintage Journey where my fellow Creative Guide teamies have been busy creating some amazing projects. 

Our fabulous sponsor this month is the Funkie Junkie Boutique who are offering a fabulous $25 dollar prize to one lucky person.

As always thank you for joining me today and have a lovely weekend.

Jennie x