Craft Project- The Secret Box

I made a secret box for my 4 year old grand daughter....and who would have known that it was "the best thing EVER", lol. Those were her words.

It is made with a cigar box. First I took a square piece of felt and glued it on the top of the box, covered that with a quilt square of her favorite material, (I did not want buy a whole yard and have leftover), then I trimmed it out with lace. I put the nob on the top (more on that later) and glued an already finished piece of wood from JoAnn's or Michael's craft store...I can't remember which and then I lined the bottom of the inside with felt. BOOM, best secret box ever!!!

Well, the 2 year old loves it, too. She keeps getting into it, lol. Then the family went to Disney World last week and the girls came home with lots of trinkets.  Now the 2 year old wants her own. So yesterday I made another box.

Remember I told you I would get back to the knob. This time I drilled a small whole in the top first, then I used a tap with a sharp point to make a small hole in the material. Then took the whole punch to the felt and material and glued the felt and material on the box. Now you can screw the nob on. Take it from me this is easier and way smarter then trying to do it without the whole. Duh!!!

I decorated the second box with pink duck tape so she can finish it herself with stickers.

Let's see if she likes it!

Playing with Collage

 The last couple of days I have been playing with 2 cigar boxes, paints, gel medium and collage paper. 

I found myself engrossed with the techniques. I did not want to put it down to eat, sleep or anything. It was like I was possessed.

I was first drawn to this cigar box because of it's size. It is 9x11 so it felt like the size of a book. Then there was all the different textures. It still had the cigar labels on it which were embossed, there were cuts, torn paper, writing in pencil and the best of all....the grain in the wood. It all just seemed to pull me in. Some people would have said it is just a cigar box, right. But I saw it as a canvas with art already going on. 

I started with gel medium and glued all the pieces of paper down. Covered parts of it with gesso and left other parts as it was. I then took Titan Buff by Golden (the best paints ever) and put a light coat over the parts I wanted to see. You should have seen all the texture just popping out, which lead to many other colors of paints. There were golds, browns, greens, blues, and paint that had Iron Oxide in it. Some of these were new colors that I learned about in Julie Prichard's online class "Color: Beyond the Basics."  There was so much depth going on but I still used some modeling paste in areas that still needed texture. I also used wax and shoe polish. 

Well, believe or not after few days had gone by, I managed to put it down and started on another box. This is the picture of the 2nd box which ended up to be more of a collage. So where is my first box you ask? It is sitting on the sidelines waiting for hardware to come in the mail. But here is a section of it and color does not even show like it does in person.

In a couple of days I will post the outcome but the most important part of all of this was how engrossed and possessed I got doing this project.

                                     Wow, was that fun!