Today sees a new challenge at A Vintage Journey - 'Box it Up. Julia is our host this month and describes the challenge:
This month our theme is boxes! Perhaps you will make a trunk or suitcase, some kind of package to hold a gift, or maybe make a card or journal page showing presents. Just remember to ensure that you create in one of our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.
I have been playing with my gel plates and monoprinting recently so decided to make a box for different techniques and ideas. The box is designed to fit ATC's so I can store my ideas or samples ATC size.
Box Dimensions
As ATC's are 2.5 x 3.5 inches my box was designed at 3.75 wide, 2.75 high and 2.5 deep.
So for the base my card measured 9.25 x 8 inches. I scored on the long side at 2.75 and 6.5 and on the shorter side at 2.75 and 5.25.
I make my lids 1/8 of an inch bigger.
So my card was 6 and 3/8 x 5 and 1/8. Scoring on the long side at 1.25 (1 and 2/8) and 5 and 1/8 and on the short side at 1.25 and 3 and 7/8.
I painted one side of each cut piece of card and added a little stencilling and stamping - these become the inside of the box. I sealed with matt medium as I was going to turn them over and make a mess so wanted to be able to wipe if any stray paint found itself onto the surface.
Next I worked on the card that would be the outside of the box.
I used a small gel plate, added a colour with a brayer (PaperArtsy Fresco Acrylic paint) and then added a pattern with either a stamp or stencil. I then stamped the gel plate onto the card in patches in different places. I repeated this many times with different colours - sometime working over a previously coloured area. I added a little sponged paint through a stencil (circles) to bring the varied patterns together a little bit.
The finished box with a few ATC samples!
Nikki
