Our Craft Lounge--April Artist of the Month: Keepsake Box

Good Morning Friends! Today is a special day for me because it's my first day as the Our Craft Lounge Artist of the Month! I was so excited when I received Kendra's email inviting me to be their April AOM! I'll admit that I was a tad intimidated when I saw that I would be following Sankari Wegman, their March AOM, but I sure loved seeing all her fantastic creations every Monday. If you didn't see them, be sure to visit the OCL Blog and check out her posts from last month. I promise you'll be WOWED!

For my first project this month, I was going to make a card, but I noticed that my DD was amassing a collection of cards from family and friends, and she didn't have a place to keep the special ones. So, I decided to make her a little keepsake box, and I chose to use the beautiful Our Craft Lounge stamp set, You Make Me Happy. Coneflowers are one of my favorite wildflowers--especially the purple and orange variety.

This box started life as a sneaker shoe box.

I couldn't get the entire label off the inside of the hinged lid, but with all the tabs inside this box, holding it together, I decided to forego lining the inside. I covered the outside with a solid yellow paper and distressed all the edges with Tea Dye Distress Ink.

Then I used a sheet of dp from the Abrianna K&Co collection to cover the top and three sides of the lid. Aged Mahogany Distress Ink is sponged on all the edges of each piece of the dp.

After gluing the dp to the lid, I added a beautiful metallic braid to the edges with Scor-Tape. Using 1/8" Scor-Tape, I also attached yellow mini puff ball trim all around the top edges.

Here's a close up of the braid and puff ball trim:

I stamped the coneflower image three times to create a larger image, using Eclipse tape as a mask where necessary. I then colored it with Copic markers and added 24K Gold Sparkly Fluff to each flower center. 

If you haven't tried Sparkly Fluff yet, you should. It's a real treat to use. It adheres easily with glue, has a very soft texture, and is beautiful on an image. You can see it in the photo above on the flower centers.

My DD loves receiving cards for any occasion, and they always make her happy, so the sentiment in this stamp set was perfect for this project, as it will be used to store a bunch of happy memories. :) I stamped it in black in the upper left corner of the image panel.

After distressing the edges of the image panel with my Distrezz-It-All and sponging Tea Dye Distress Ink, I cut a Fancy Tags Two diecut in half lengthwise, sprayed each half with Perfect Pearls Mist, and sponged the edges with Distress Ink to give them a metallic look, then adhered them to each end of the image panel. I added a few black rhinestones for interest. Before adhering this panel to the box, I glued a paper baker's doily in the upper right corner of the box. Then, I tilted the image panel slightly and adhered it over that.

The blue corner flourishes deserve a post all on their own, but for now, I'll just briefly tell you that I made a mold of this from a Recollections embellishment, then made four corners out of white clay, painted them with blue acrylic paint, then wiped the excess off and colored the gold accents on with a caligraphy marker. I sprayed a light coat of clear acrylic on them to help keep the gold from getting scratched off.

I added a couple of glitter chipboard flourishes to the left side of the box and made a large six-loop bow to attach over them. I made the flower from two artificial flowers that resembled burgundy daisies. I didn't really like how they looked, and didn't care if I ruined them, so I tried a little experiment with my heat gun. I heated one of the flowers from the underside until the petals crinkled and it resembled a closed flower bud. Then, I glued that to the top of the other flower and heated that from underneath, too, until those petals encased the first flower. I added the leaves to the bottom, heating them just a little bit, to give them some texture. Then I used hot glue and attached the flower to the middle of the bow. I love how it turned out. It's way too big for a card, but for something like this, it's perfect!

Thanks for staying with me to the end of this post. I hope you enjoyed all the details on the box, and if you have any questions about how I made any of it, just shoot me an email and I'll be glad to answer them. 

And, thanks again, to Kendra and the girls at OCL for inviting me to join them for a few weeks. I'm looking forward to spending Monday's with Our Craft Lounge all this month, and I hope you'll plan to join us, too!

I'll also be entering this project in the following challenges:

Little Darlings Challenge 20: Outside

Simon Says Stamp: Anything Goes

~Hugs, 

 

Stamps: You Make Me Happy (Our Craft Lounge)
Paper: Abrianna (K&Co)
Ink: Copic markers; Memento; Distress Ink
Dies: Fancy Tags Two (Spellbinders)
Accessories: Ribbon (Michaels); Metallic Braid, Mini Puff Ball Trim (Simplicity); artificial flowers & leaves; paper doily; shimmer chipboard flourishes (Making Memories); clay corner embellishment (original from Recollections); Sparkly Fluff; Perfect Pearls Mist; rhinestones; shoebox

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