Monochrome White Micro Chest

If you’d like to order a customized micro chest, please check out my Showroom of Luxurious Boxes & Gifts.

In this week’s Blog Exclusive post I’m sharing an altered micro chest. You’ve seen me do these before, as nursery decor pieces and as gift boxes both feminine and masculine.

This time I was asked to add a micro treasure chest to one of my customized 100% photo explosion boxeswith the added challenge to work in only one color, creating a so-called monochrome project: white. So I painted the chest white, then matted it with some white wood texture paper that I embossed with a wood pattern first. Finally I created some faux leather strips from white cardstock. I’m quite pleased with the effect, and with the surprisingly different shades of white that are – apparently – possible.

 

Have you ever created any monochrome projects? Do you like them at all? Please share your thoughts in the comment section underneath this post!

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December Deluge 8: Christmas Treasure Chest – A Signature Sheet Idea

This December month I’ll post many projects on my blog, to give you some inspiration and ideas for your Christmas projects – and also to help you spend your holiday time creatively. In my previous posts I showed you several December projects, the first of which was a quick Christmas Mini Album, so you can start there if you’d like to see them allToday: Part 8 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂

As you may know, Graphic 45 paper collections always have a so-called signature sheet, which features the title design of the collection. It’s always the first sheet in a 12×12″ or 8×8″ paper pad, and its design generally depicts a collage of elements that together make up the title of the collection.

In several of my previous December Deluge projects I used the Nutcracker Sweet collection, and used up all of my 8×8″ papers – that is, excepting one: the signature sheet! There’s two of them in each pad, and I saved them for something special. So in this blog post and my next I’m sharing two ideas to use these special signature or title sheets.

First: a Christmas Treasure Chest – enjoy the video and pictures below!

 

 

 

Next up: December Deluge pt. 9: an 8×8″ Signature Sheet Christmas Card!

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Prima Romance Novel Altered Treasure Chest, pt. 2 – Completed

Here’s the little treasure chest again (see part 1), the one I altered with paper from Prima, the Romance Novel 6×6 inch (15×15 cm) design paper pad.

The mini tags were an extra challenge, in that I wanted to print text on them instead of writing them by hand. How do you print text on teeny-tiny labels and tags? I can’t say everything went perfect from the start, can’t say there were no misprints either, but: in the end I was able to come up with some pretty awesome mini prints on some pretty tiny mini tags! 🙂 And if you’d like to learn how to do this as well, check out my free tutorial!

Of course there’s a video below, but first a quick reminder of what I started with: “Before”

And here’s “After”:

I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, and I really like how it matches my colonial wooden cabinet so perfectly… Plus, I’m especially pleased with how the quilled dandelion turned out – thanks to a tutorial by Inna from Inna’s Creations.

As I mentioned in part 1, I made this box on commission for someone who is going to send it to his lady friend who lives far far away, across many oceans and seas. Of course I sincerely hope that the intended recipient, “R”, really loves this little treasure chest her friend commissioned for her!

So, on to the video! The first one is in English, the second in Dutch.

Click here if you don’t see the video.

 

Klik hier als je het filmpje hieronder niet kunt zien.

 

 

Safely arrived at its destination! 🙂

Prima Romance Novel altered treasure chest, pt. 1 – Preview / Work in progress

I’m working on a commissioned altered box at the moment, and I thought it would be fun to share some of the progress.

The person I’m making this for wants to send an altered box to his dear friend in New Zealand (yea, I’m being shipped overseas, woohoo! :-)). He has sent me some short notes he wants to be written on the box and furthermore he’s asked me to do something with a dandelion, or a dandelion theme, as this flower has special meaning to him and his friend.

Here’s what I came up with so far:

  1. I’m going to use the Romance Novel design paper stack, I don’t think there’s a paper out there that’s more fitting! It has everything you could want for a commission like this: it’s gorgeous, it’s romantic AND it has a love letter theme, including vintage postage stamps and the like! How cool is that for a gift that will actually be sent overseas by mail!
  2. I decided I wanted to find a way to create an actual paper dandelion, 3D, life size. Didn’t have a clue how to do it, but I was going to find out and make it work!

So, here’s some pics of the work in progress, enjoy!

The wooden box I’m altering. It’s kind of a mini treasure chest and it’s about 3.5×2.5×2.5 inches (9x6x6 cm). Isn’t it adorable?

First I removed its lock and the hinges on the back. Then I painted it dark brown except its little legs which I painted gold, using simple acryllic paint. I mixed it with a pearl paint to create a pearly shine. Then I sprayed glimmer mist on the whole thing, using Tattered Angel’s Iridescent Gold and Vanilla Breeze. Nothing too fancy, but it does create a very nice, subtle effect. Plus, this box has Golden Feet! 🙂

Here’s the layout for the box. I sprayed each piece of paper with a bit of glimmer mist, using the same two colors I used on the box. Of course I’m going to distress everything as well, for which I’ll be using Tim Holtz’s Black Soot distress ink.


On to the creation of the dandelion. Fortunately the internet was there to teach me how to make one (check out Inna’s Creations, a very creative Israeli lady whose website I stumbled onto. She makes gorgeous paper art!). I started by creating the paper strip on this picture.

Roll up tight!

And spread the little petals. Done – A cute little life-sized paper dandelion! Thank you Inna! 🙂


I’m going to put this inside the box, so that when my friend’s friend opens it, a lovely, bright piece of summer will smile at her 🙂

So, this was part 1 – hope you enjoyed it!

I’ll be showing you the finished product in part 2. Until then, stay creative!