Monday 20 September 2010

Pretty distressed box

There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, "Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams." Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there. - Erma Bombeck

I have a thing about making boxes at the moment.  I think the interest started a few weeks ago when my daughter asked me to make her a box so she could decorate it with faces and call it Dennis. Dennis the box. Ok..... then she was traumatised when Marcus sat on it, so I had to make another one, and Marcus wanted one too, which he said was called Billy.  He's a friend of Dennis apparently... or rather he was until Mitchell squashed him hahahaha.  So now he is in the bin, and I decided this time I would make a box for myself and decorate it.  I haven't given it a name yet... don't want to tempt fate!


Another love of mine at the moment is getting my hands messy and making papers to use in my projects.  I've seen a few 'distressed' items on various blogs and have toyed with the idea of having a go to see what I could do.  I really think it is a matter of getting the right paper to start off with as I tried 'ageing' some paper in a nice bowl of roiibos tea, but when I took it out, it fell apart.  Oops!  So I scrapped that idea and stuck to techniques I know, and armed with cosmic shimmer mists and a scrunched up piece of paper I set to work on my trusty hob.  Now don't get me wrong, the resulting piece of paper was pretty and shimmery, but even though it was crumpled, it just didn't look distressed enough, so I waited til it dried out (OK I didn't exactly wait, I chucked it on a shelf in the oven when it was cooling down after tea) then attacked the paper with some staz-on coloured ink pads and it was starting to look pretty battered up now *grin*.  Like with a number of my projects where I try out something new, I find myself with a piece of paper that I know I can turn into something, just can't quite decide what... So I left it overnight and suddenly I had an idea involving a box!


Unusually for me, I managed to find a template online which would fit the bill of what I was looking for quite easily.  I wanted a heart sort of thing on top so that it folded together and closed rather than a box with a lid and I found one.  It went together quite easily and then I flattened it again and covered it with the paper I made earlier - amazing what you can do with a bit of DST...  so now I had in my hands what looked like a crinkly box, but it wasn't distressed enough godammit!  So I flattened it again and attacked the poor thing further with clear embossing ink, enbossing powder and a good blast from my heatgun mwahahahaha!  I got a load of pink lace in the market a few weeks ago and I trimmed the heart to make it stand out, but plain old pink didn't look quite right so I whipped it off, grabbed another piece of lace and misted it and attacked it with more staz-on inks hehehehe I then stamped a Panda stamps butterfly onto a scrap of the distressed paper, stuck that on, wasn't looking quite right so did another butterfly, embossed parts of it and layered it on to give it a 3D look and roughed up the edges of the heart a bit more.  Well I'd say it looks pretty distressed now *evil grin* lol ;)




Took this pic to show it is a box and how it opens:


And the back of the box to show the distressed paper in more detail:




Just in addition, my long-suffering partner Steve was having a wipe round in the kitchen the other day and was confused as to why there was pink shimmery stuff on the cloth when he wiped the glass table down, then found even more on the hob.  What's this stuff he says, me *smiles sweetly*


Annnnnd whilst I was hard at work distressing my box, my 1 year old son was busy distressing the living room for me.  In the absence of his 3 year old brother/partner-in-crime, he did a pretty good job all by his little self!


I would like to enter this for the following challenges:


The Stampman - Distress
The ABC Challenge - D is for Distressing
The Corrosive Challenge - Unused Craft Stuff
Sir Stampalot - All Distressed



9 comments:

  1. Hi Sarah

    That pile of toys takes me back a year or two, the times I used to sort and almightly pile of lego mixed with everything else.

    Your distressed box is gorgeous, I can image the wonderful shimmer it has.

    Thank you for sharing with us at Stampalot Challenge this month and goood luck.

    B x

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  2. Lovely piece of work Sarah, the finished result was definitely worth the mess in the work room and your living room lol. Oh how I miss that.
    Thanks for joining us at the Sir Stampalot blog this month. Hugs
    Pinky

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  3. wow that is fab, love your sons distruction my two are like that too

    thank you for joining us on abc this week

    Vicky x

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  4. A wonderful creation , thanks for joining us at Sir Stampalot this month and good luck!
    Hugs
    Francesca

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  5. Gorgeous creation, thanks for joining Sir Stampalot’s challenge, good luck.
    Happy crafting
    Tracy x

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  6. Such a different creation! Thanks for playing along with The Stamp Man's Distress Challenge :)

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  7. A really lovely card thanks for joining us at The stamp man challenge x

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  8. What a pretty box! I love how it opens.
    Thank you for joining us at Sir Stampalot this month.
    Clare x

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  9. How wonderful! Thanks for getting distressed with us at Sir stampalot this month and good luck!

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