A box!

Happy New Year and all the best for 2021 - let's hope much different than 2020!

I am starting off the year with a home decor project, why don't you let me know what you think in the comments below!

I received a box of delicious, glazed chestnuts at Christmas, and look at that beautiful wooden box that is screaming out to be kept and used and treasured! The box measures about 9x6 inches or 22x16 cm so it's a good size for little trinkets or why not cards and envelopes, and the untreated wood is really good looking.

I knew I wanted to decorate the top, keeping some of the original features like the gold backdrop and the leaves while hiding the chestnuts and also the commercial text.

The first thing I did was to color the leaves, I used a small finger dauber and some green dye inks from Altenew, they did take a little while to dry but stained the leaves a lovely green tint.

Then I made a template from vellum to enable me to cover the the frame with the text.

I tried a few options before deciding on this dark brown Woodgrain Bark card stock from Altenew. 
Since I could not match the original light wood color of the box I decided to go for a completely contrasting color and this paper is gorgeous. The color reminds me of my parent's panga panga dining room table!

You can see the contrast below where I have also started adding flowers.

I cut several petal layers from the Altenew Build a Flower Peony Blossom set in a couple of blue shades. Some of my card stock is really old and this particular paper was bought in Beijing over 20 years ago... 

I added a little bit of shading with a finger dauber to the petals with Altenew Crisp inks in matching colors. Then I worked the paper with my fingers to bend the petals a little before assembling with foam tape. The flower centers were die cut from similarly old gold card stock to match the gold backdrop.

The flowers were glued to the box in strategic places to hide the original chestnuts and also towards the edges of the box. Then I cut a few of Altenews Leafy Garland Die in a green shade and stuck them under the flowers to fill out my arrangement.

Here is the finished box, it has a lot of dimension and I love the brow, blue and muted green color combo.

That star shaped Christmas table cloth was probably embroidered by my maternal grandmother, my sister remembers it from Mormor and Morfars house in Lund, it was passed to me from my Mom and I love it!

In this photo you can see some of the dimension of the flowers on the box better.

I am entering this project into Altenew's Home Decor Contest go to the Altenew blog to see all the innovative entries!

Supplies for this project:

A wooden box to upcycle - use what you have!

Altenew:

Build a flower Peony Blossom dies

Leafy Garland die

Woodgrain Bark card stock

Crisp die inks

Other:

Mod Podge glue, foam tape, various card stocks, vellum, scissors...

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Hugs,

Helen