Monday 3 January 2011

Shrink Plastic Decorated Box

This started life as a plain wooden box that I picked up in The Range.

                      Shrink Plastic decorated box

I painted it with one of my all time favourites, Liquitex  Super Heavy Bodied transparent Burnt Umber. I just use a little water with it to make it easier to go on.  I used cream shrink plastic, and had several goes at getting the colour right. Stazon black just didn’t look right and Stazon timber Brown was almost black when it was shrunk. Of course I’d forgotten that colours intensify when heated!Any way, I finally tried Versa Magic chalk ink, Jumbo Java and it turned out to be  just the colour I was hoping for. (Luckily, had nothing else to try lol).  I used Crafty Individual ‘s stamps to make the tiles.
I then thought I would emboss the top of the box with gold embossing powder, and a flourish stamp, but this was a disaster. Bits of the embossing powder stuck everywhere, and the flourishes were much to heavy. Out with the sandpaper to sand it all back, touch it up so it was smooth again and add a touch of umber here and there where it was needed. I wasn’t able to get the flourishes out completely, but decided that they actually looked ok.I then dry brushed gold paint over .  

                   Shrink plastic decorated box - Inside

The inside of the box. On a piece of gold coloured silk , I stamped the bird only , and, with a piece of felt underneath the silk,  free stitched using straight stitch and free motion, with a variegated Madeira thread. This was cut to size and stuck into the lid. For the bottom I stuck a piece of plain brown felt, which I also used to cover the outside.
The last thing left to do, was to add the shrink plastic tiles, which was done using book binders glue.

1 comment:

WendyK said...

This is lovely Annie, but as you know I love birds.