Me again... back with another post on the stuff I made for Linda's birthday. After all that haulin we did on our trip, we both realized how silly we were being for hoarding all of our supplies and have both been trying to use up our stash. So my project features a lot of my stash I've been hoarding or want to hoard but won't let myself. My incentive is that I'm using my beloved items on a project that will be appreciated by my bestie. We always joke that we don't want to "waste" our good stuff on those who don't appreciate it! Bwahahaha! I guess that's why Linda and Cami always get my shabby chic projects and no one else.
So since we both vowed to not hoard anymore, I'm not sure if she will really use it as a hoard vault, so maybe she'll use it to store other keepsakes. Here's the lid of my project...
Started with an unfinished wood hinged box that I found from Ben Franklin as my base. I liked it because of the size since I've never seen one that big before. Personally I would need a much larger hoard vault!!
First step was to gesso that puppy up. It sure took awhile since it's quite large. But I finally managed to get it all painted (my least favorite part of the process), then added another layer of white acrylic paint over it. I must say, it does come out much nicer when you prime it.
After painting, I was finally able to start decorating!! Yay! First up was to choose the paper. That in and of itself took me awhile to decide on. I normally gravitate to purple since she likes purple, but on the trip she told me she was starting to buy other colors too, so I decided to switch it up a bit and go with pink! Hope she likes it. Settled on a shabby Kaisercraft paper that I had showed her when we were chatting. She seemed to like it so crossing my fingers. I also liked it cause although it had a shabby print, it was pretty subtle.
So I trimmed the paper up- ended up using about 3 sheets of 12x12 cardstock to do the outside and inside cover. Good thing I had bought a bunch the other day. Then it was time to embellish! I always get nervous before gluing down stuff since it seems so permanent.
I started by laying down some cheese cloth and a large floral lace applique over it. I really didn't know what the heck I'd use that for, so it was a nice to find a use for it. Glad it fit nicely on the box! And I gotta say I'm really in love with cheese cloth! It give it such a nice shabby touch!
Then I decided on a "Vicki flower" as everyone refers to it on You Tube. She actually calls it a puffy flower cause that's what it is! I think I use two or three rosettes to make it that large. Then I added some more cheese cloth to cover up where I glued the flower and then took some time to pick out just the right bling to add to the center.
After gluing down the Vicki flower, I then started adding white, pink and cream flowers from my collection. Some I made and some I bought. In between I added wheat sprays, handmade stick pins, acrylic flowers, pearls and resin butterfly pictured here. Love that I could make it sitting on the rose.
On the other side of the box, I adhered three more butterflies from the same Prima set. I love those!
Here's the side view of the box. Here you can see how high all the flowers go. I was worried since it was hard to close up the priority mail box when I was packing it!
These flowers were on the bottom front of the vault. All the flowers featured on this project were either handmade or by Prima, Recollections, I am Roses or Wild Orchid Crafts. The butterfly shown here was one of the hair pins from our Downtown LA haul.
Because every vault needs a lock, I added on a Melissa Francis key hole from my stash.
And here's the lace trim I used. I recently placed an order with Tresor de Luxe on Etsy for some lace trims. I love all of the ones I ordered! Decided again not to hoard, so I used it on Linda's box. The original lace did not have pearls, I added flatback pearls to the center of each flower.
Because the trim did not evenly go around the box, I had to do some patchwork. Used the Ace of Cakes technique and covered the area with flowers and a butterfly shown below. Would you have noticed if I didn't say anything?
And here's the back view of the box. Forgot to mention that half way thorough the project, I decided that the paper was still a little bright for me, so I added gesso over the paper. Then my paper started curling!!!! I panicked, but later remembered someone on You Tube saying to zap it with the heat gun and it shouldn't pucker, so I tried it and it did the trick! Need to keep that in mind in case that happens again.
Since I had added flowers to the front and side, I decided to decorate the whole corner and add more flowers.
When Linda opens the box, here's what she'll see on the inside lid. I added "my vault"on the inside in case she didn't want anyone to know it was her vault!
And not sure why blogger keeps trying to upload this picture sideways, but I guess you'll have to use your imagination on this one. I saw in a tutorial on You Tube that someone lined the inside of the box with shabbies!!! I loved that idea, so I jacked it and did the same to Linda's box. Since it was the inside, I decided to use pink instead of white.
Inside the box I added some goodies. Most of it was supplies that I bought for her, but here's some that I made. I saw alot of You Tubers using the mason jar die cuts as the packaging, so I jacked that idea too and did the same. I cut my mason jars using recycled packaging (acetate) and then cut a separate lid and adhered it on. The butterflies were made following a
tutorial on Wild Orchid Crafts You Tube by Crystal. I didn't make it exactly the same, but it sure was fun making them!
Phew! That was a lot of photos yah? Be back again tomorrow with my last birthday project.
Have a Happy Valentine's Day!
