“I can do something with this” and “I can use this someday” and “I can make something out of this” are phrases that exit my mouth almost daily. This month I pulled out some of my long-hoarded Valentine’s Day candy heart boxes for some experimentation.
I decided to go with spray painting my boxes and lids so that I could get a nice smooth coat and avoid brushstrokes. Please be sure to do all spray painting in a well-ventilated area and use a mask, particularly if you have respiratory problems.
I tried an assortment of the Krylon spray paints, including the stone and suede textured paints. The first rule for this project is to go with multiple light coats to get good coverage, rather than one big heavy coat. Here are some photos of the assorted boxes and lids drying on my garage workbench. You’ll see that a few lids separated into two pieces. Look at the lovely “stone” texture on the gold heart!
Once you have a piece that’s covered to your satisfaction, spray it with gold and black webbing paint. Again, you may have to spray the inside and the sides a few times to get the coverage you want. Once that’s dry, it’s time to art up your piece! Here’s a box lid that I sprayed with webbing:
Step One: Choose an image from the Dover clipart book and copy onto the paper of your choice. Trace onto the image, using the heart as a stencil. Trim inside the lines and fit inside the box lid. You may need to do some extra trimming to fit it inside. It does not need to be perfect, just good enough to fid inside the lid.
Step Two: Print quote onto Sheer Heaven. Make sure to measure and be sure it will fit well with your chosen image and won’t block any key spots on the image.
Sheer Heaven is a heavy, durable, magical vellum-like paper. For this particular project, any vellum you can run through your printer should work fine, but I am enamored with the quick-drying qualities of the Sheer Heaven, so I used it instead.
Step Three: Trim the quote and punch holes in the corners. Use heart brads to attach vellum to your trimmed image. Glue the entire assembly into the box lid using gel medium. Use a thin, dry-ish application of gel medium to avoid getting the wrinkling that will occur if the paper gets too damp.
Step Four: Use Crafter’s Pick adhesive and a cotton swab to attach small pink beading to the inside of the box lid. Use more cotton swabs to wipe up stray glue after beading is in place.
Step Five: Attach strips of O'So Sticky Tape around sides of lid. Gather a length of the fibers and knot at one end, keeping the knot about 4” from the end. Beginning at the bottom point of the heart, begin to expose tape in order to adhere fibers. Start right after the knot, so that some fibers hang loose. Continue to work around the sides of the heart until you get back to the starting point. Tie a knot at the bottom and let fibers hang. Trim off excess fibers. If there are any exposed areas of sticky tape, use fiber scraps to cover them.
Step Six: Attach sawtooth hanger to back of piece with Diamond Glaze.
Now, I really did do something with this! I wonder what I’ll do with…
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