Wooden Sewing Box - Inspired by Sue Carrington for Paper Artsy

I'm joining in the Paper Artsy challenge at the 11th hour this week. It's been a difficult week for a number of reasons, and my blogging is completely behind and out of synch as my internet (and landline) has been down for a couple of days. In my week of ups and downs though, I have as always enjoyed the Paper Artsy blog, and I love the work of Sue Carrington who is this week's guest artist, so thank you for giving us so much pleasure. I must apologize for uploading something that I may well go back and tweak a little, and I hope that isn't bad form, but I didn't want to miss the deadline and I have had lots of mishaps with this project along the way.

 

The box was wooden with silver hinges so I painted it with Snowflake Fresco Finish and then coloured the hardware with an alcohol pen which gave a dark bronze colour which I then knocked back with Treasure Gold in Ice Fire, which is a brand new purchase for me, and buffed it up. I covered all the inner sections and back and front of the box with Tim Holtz paper which I gessoed so that my stamping would show up more. I then basically stamped with millions and trillions of Paper Artsy stamps, I would challenge even Mrs PA herself to spot every one of them! My plan was to use neutral colours, starting with the palest first, with abstract stamps, and then build up to my sewing related focal images in the stronger colours, to give a very layered effect. Thank you so much to Petra who came round on Thursday evening with her sewing stamps. You see, it wasn't an entirely bad week! At this point the box was going a bit Pete Tong, mainly because I couldn't decide how it was oriented, and Petra pointed out that if it was laid flat on a desk and you were working from it, the sectioned part would be the base and the plain section would be facing you and would be the lid. But when you are carrying the box like a suitcase, the orientation of the stamping needs to be a different way up to when it is on a table. This is still making my brain ache, but I decided the only way is to have all the stamping going in multiple directions so this is what I have done, and that is why I will go back and tweak it some more and make that look more deliberate.

I used text stamping in grey around all the edges inside and out, although it doesn't show very clearly in the photos. I used Treasure Gold around all the box edges and buffed it up. I decided that as I wanted the box to be a practical item I wouldn't use any embellishments or dangly bits that could get knocked and scruffy in use, and I wanted to be able to stack things on top of it, but I may change my mind. What do you think?

I have a proper old fashioned sewing box upstairs, but in this photo you can see a very unaesthetically pleasing plastic pot I keep my mini sewing kit in downstairs for when I want to sew a button on in front of the tele. Doesn't this look better:-

What I really need, though, is something to take to the Stampin' Up class I go to once a month. I think this will fit the bill. Complete with Treasure Gold!