Treasure Chest

Hello everyone
How are you all doing? I hope you all are enjoying the festivities going on in India....Ganeshotsav is almost over and I cant wait for Navratri to begin...garba, dandya raas and awesome food. This is the my most favorite time of the year when festivals are being celebrated in India with so much energy and excitement.

I have got so engrossed in festivities that I just tend to ignore my work and work commitments and projects tend to near completion slowly and sometimes I just give myself due dates just to tell me to complete it. So today, I am posting a project on which I have been working on for almost 2 months......on and off. Because it was not on order, so I had the luxury to sideline it when I had other things or rush orders on my mind. I decided I had to give myself an ultimatum to take this project seriously......with so much festivities......I am like a child and get so engrossed.....I forget everything.....and I finally completed it on 2nd September....HIGH FIVE......

I got busy with Ganeshotsav and finally got sometime today to write a post about this beautiful project I have made for my friend. It was supposed to be her Belated Birthday gift......Well I am not so delayed after all....Just a delay of 2 months....lol. My BFF is a stationary hoarder and I feel if I rob her, my entire future generation can go without spending anything on stationary items....She has so many pencils, pens, erasers, colors, crayons, diaries and other stuff.....I am sure she doesn't even have a count of it and one day when I asked her to show me her hoarded gold......she had stuffed them in plastic bags and kept them someplace she couldn't locate. That is when I decided, she needed a treasure chest to store her stuff and I started making one for her from scratch.

 So, this treasure chest is not a small sized box.....its a 3 layered box which has lot of space....but I am sure not enough for her collection.....but I am sure it will be of some use to her. I have built this box from scratch.....It took me 2 days to figure out what I wanted to do and how I wanted it to be. I designed it myself....make some mistakes on the way and it helped me to build it better.
This box measures 17" x  12" x 14" ( length x breadth x  height) in dimensions. I have used sunboard and 1500 gms paper board which I have bought from Anupam Stationary stores. to make the box. The entire outer box is made using a sandwich of sunboard ans card board to obtain more durability and strength to the box. To make the inner partitions and flaps as well as small boxes and the other flap to attach the lock is made using the card board. The total weight of this box without anything inside it is 4 kgs.

 FIRST LAYER/SHELF

I have used red tacky tapes, white adhesive and silicon glue for all purposes for this box. Handmade paper is used to cover the box on the inside as well as outside. pattern paper from Eno greetings is used to add some decoration and to cover the boxes. I have done some stamping on this box as well...used Fiskars stamp to add more pattern and borders to this box. Stenciling is done using distress inks in watnut stain, vintage photo, hickory smoke, black soot, old paper and antique linen. I have used same colors on the top and bottom but to obtain a different appearance, I gave the lower part of box a coat of white gesso, and then stenciled over it. That is how the colors look different.

SECOND LAYER/SHELF

  

 

To embellish the box, I made some corners from black chipboard and gave it a coat of glossy accents to make it look shiny. Did some decoration with black satin ribbon, polka dotted paper tape and Brown gingham pattern paper tapes. Those little golden flowers were in my stash and i have used them to add more interest to the chest.

THIRD LAYER/SHELF

 

I have used chipboard letters and colored them using black pigment ink pad and then added a layer of glossy accents on it. To add more interest to it, I added some micro beads on them in bronze and golden color and mounted them on layers of black and white handmade paper. These were then mounted on the box using foam tape. More chunky glitter in black and silver is added to the box using some liquid adhesive.

I have filled this box is some gift from my side which include handmade diaries, decoupaged pencils and more things which are only for my BFF's eyes and ears......can't disclose. This chest has 4 hinges and 3 latches added to it as well as some brads to embellish the name board. All the latches and hinges are held by little screws.
The supplies used for this project are:

• 3 Full emperial sheet of card board (1500gsm) - Anupam stationary store
• 2 full emperial sheet of sunboard- anupam stationary store
• 4 Black full emperial handmade paper (Itsy Bitsy)
• 2 White full emperial handmade paper (Itsy Bitsy) 
• 2 Beige full emperial handmade paper (Itsy Bitsy)
• Chipboard sheets to make the boxes inside ( optional)
• Eno Greetings Pattern Paper ( The craft shop)
• 3 latches and hinges ( A1 craft store)
• Glossy accents (A1 craft store)
• Gingham and polka dotted paper tapes (Anupam stationary store)
• Micro beads, chunky glitter ( Itsy Bitsy)
• Brads ( Neha Koradia)
• Read tacky tape
• Fevicol
• Aleene's tacky glue
• Foam tape
• Black satin ribbon ( Iitsy Bitsy)
• Black chipboard for making corners
• Mdf butterfly buttons (A1 cratft)
• Fiskars stamps
• Distress inks and ink blending tool- Watnut stain, Vintage photo, Old paper, Antique linen, Hickory smoke, Black soot.
• Stencil ( Itsy Bitsy)
• Decoupage papr and glue for pencils ( optional)
• Diaries ( optional)
• Silicon Glue/ Glue gun ( Itsy Bitsy)
• Golden ribbon
• Eyelets (ItsyBitsy)
• Other papers( personal stash)

I even have a video to show the entire chest on youtube and I have added the link below for you all to see.

I am linking my project for this month's challenge at Ranganjali- Sparkly and shiny. I have added gold and bronze micro beads as well as some glitter and some golden shiny embellishments

 It has been a long post and very picture heavy....I hope you all liked it and please do leave comments if you do. Thank you all for reading my post and I hope you all have a good day.

Mails - Newspaper Basket

Hello everyone
I have new project for you this week ad it a newspaper basket made specifically to keep your mails. It is made from newspaper tubes using the coiling technique. The best part about making such baskets, you can first figure out what size you want and then start the coiling process. To make this basket, I needed about 60-70 coiled tubes and now this again depends on the size and thickness of your tubes.

This basket it different from the most of the baskets I have done previously because I have used lot of techniques to make. I have colored the basket with acrylic colors and then decoupages on it using flowers cutouts from tissue napkins and mod podge. Another thing, I have incorporated is some glitter or confetti glitter at few places. To add some more dimension, I have outlined the flowers using some white 3d liner and added few 3D stickers of stamps and a beautiful chipboard key. This basket was way out of my comfort zone wrt to colors and bling...but I liked it the way it turned out.

 I started by making 8 circular coiled discs which are about 5" in diameter. I coiled them around a small bottle to get the uniform hole in the center. Then I went ahead and stuck 2 coils together to make a sturdy biscuit like piece. I made two such pieces. These will be used for making the base. The remaining 4 discs will be used for the sides of the baskets. 

Now to make the piece supported by the discs, we need to make 2 small circular coils with diameter 2" and then coil more tubes over it in a square fashion. This will give us the desired shape. Keep coiling until you are happy with the size. Repeat the step for the other side too.

Not to make the rectangular pieces for the other sides, I suggest you make these when you put your coils together. When you do so, you will come to know the size required for the sides and then it will be easy to coil it.

 Once everything is done, put them together and that should give you the basket frame. I added a coat of gesso before I painted it with acrylic colors. I used Fevicryl colors in mauve, purple and magenta and did some shading. Once throughly dried, I decoupaged it with the flowers and while it was wet added some glitter to the project. After, the drying period, I did the outline in white and then gave it a few coats of Asian Paints Aquadur varnish.

Then came the fun part, adding the little stickers and the beautiful key and some glitter alphabets. These were all glued using Epoxy 6000 just to be sure nothing comes apart ever.

I am adding a youtube link for the tour of this basket.

Thats all folks, my basket is ready. I hope you all liked it. Leave me your comments and queries and I will get back to you as soon as I can.